ABSTRACT
The State of Uttar Pradesh lies in northern India, on the Gangetic plain (its mountainous north-west became the separate state of Uttaranchal on 9 November 2000). Formerly known as the United Provinces, it acquired its current name, meaning ‘northern land’ or ‘northern province’, in 1950. Most of its northern border is an international frontier with Nepal; the rest is with Uttaranchal, which lies to the north of its eastern end. In the northwest the Ganga-Yamuna Doab stretches up an extension the tip of which touches a corner of Himachal Pradesh. To the west is Haryana, except where the National Capital Territory of Delhi has been carved out on both banks of the River Yamuna. Rajasthan also lies to the west, before a southern border continues with Madhya Pradesh, distorted by a
tentacle of land that extends a corridor southwards around the town of Jhansi to include Lalitpur, as well as other, minor convolutions. In the south-east there are short borders with Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand (the two other states created in November 2000, from Madhya Pradesh and Bihar, respectively), while Bihar lies to the east. Until the bifurcation of the state, Uttar Pradesh was the fourth-largest state of the Union, but is now fifth in ranking by size, having an area of 240,928 sq km (93,058 sq miles-some official sources prefer to give the area as 236,286 sq km), although it remains by far the most populous. It retains 82% of the territory of the undivided state.
