Chandigarh
From World travel guide
Chandigarh is a very beautiful city in India. It is the capital of both Punjab and Haryana, but the city itself is not part of either state, being a union territory, i.e. administered directly by the Central government.
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After the partition of India, the historical capital of Punjab, Lahore, went to Pakistan. The Indian state of Punjab needed a new capital. The government of the state decided to build a new city at the foot of the Shivalik hills. They engaged a firm of American architects - Mayer, Whittlesey and Glass to design the city. However, midway through the design, one of the partners died in an air-crash and the firm withdrew from the project. The mantle of designing the city passed on to the French architect Le Corbusier who, though he retained many of the elements of the earlier plan, introduced a rigid linearity that is a hallmark of his philosophy [1]. Chandigarh is one of the few planned cities in India, the others being Gandhinagar in Gujarat and Dispur in Assam.
In 1966, the Hindi speaking areas were split from the Punjabi speaking areas of the state to form a new state of Haryana. Chandigarh, however, continued to be the capital of both Punjab and Haryana. In a strange anomaly, the city itself was not made part of either state to avoid dispute, but was brought under direct rule by the Cenral Government, as a union territory. It was agreed that in 1986, the city would pass to Punjab. But this has been indefinitely delayed because Haryana insists on getting some territory in return, and the two states have not been able to agree on it.
See also
- Chandigarh official site [2]
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- Rock garden designed by Nek chand.
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