Telangana Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy’s announcement on the reorganisation of districts and other administrative units in line with the repeated demands from the people, is unlikely to materialize anytime soon.
The Chief Minister has recently said that a new Commission headed by a retired Supreme Court or High Court judge would be appointed to study reorganisation of districts and mandals in-depth and give recommendations on rationalising the existing ones. He asserted that the previous Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) Government had adopted a lopsided and unscientific mechanism in reorganising the districts and mandals in the past that led to a spate of complaints from the residents and hence, the commission would tour the entire State and take feedback from the people before giving its recommendations on reorganisation of the districts/mandals.
The announcement, however, was made at a time when the Census Division of the Union Home Ministry has frozen the boundaries of the administrative units with effect from December 31 last year [2025] as a prelude to taking up the Census – 2027 works. “An important preparatory work in connection with the Census 2027 is to collect and compile the details of all the jurisdictional changes that have occurred so far after the Census 2011 and that will occur hereafter till the freezing of the boundaries of the administrative units for Census 2027, i.e. up to 31st December, 2025,” the Registrar General and Census Commissioner said in a circular issued in August [2025].
According to the circular, the changes may include the creation of new districts, change in the jurisdiction of existing districts, the de-notification of existing districts, the creation of new sub-districts or a change in their jurisdiction, the creation of a new village by splitting/merging existing village and a change in the jurisdiction of existing town area. Exclusion of areas from towns, notification of new town, de-notification of existing town, change in name/spelling of the above entities, change in ward boundaries of a town, and any other jurisdictional changes form part of the changes that remain frozen after December 31.
The process, according to the notification, will commence with house-listing and housing census (Phase-I) for one month during April – September this year as per the convenience of the State/Union Territory and population enumeration (Phase-II) would be conducted in February 2027. The Directorates of Census Operations (DCOs) had been obtaining notifications on jurisdictional changes of various administrative units from the respective State/UT Government and scrutinising the same. “Accordingly, the census frame was finalised during 2019, but due to the postponement of Census 2021, the process has been continuing.
“After notification of the intent to conduct Census 2027, the DCOs are required to send the details of all jurisdictional changes as on July 1, 2025 in the prescribed formats by August 22 last year. Similar information is to be supplied for the period July 1, 2025 to December 31, 2025 by Jan 10 this year, which will provide the complete picture of jurisdictional changes up to 31.12.2025,” as per the circular.
Senior officials refused to comment when asked about how the notification would impact the proposed reorganisation of districts announced by the Chief Minister, except for admitting that the process of reorganising districts and mandals has been frozen for the time being.