Chandigarh, Whose Capitol Complex Joined the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2016, Is Both a Union Territory and the Shared Capital of Punjab and Haryana, With 86 Percent Literacy and a Per Capita Income of Rs 4.53 Lakh

Chandigarh’s Capitol Complex, designed by Le Corbusier, is on the UNESCO World Heritage List, inscribed in 2016. The city around it is the capital of both Punjab and Haryana while being a union territory run by the Centre, a status the Chandigarh Administration itself calls a “unique distinction”. It covers 114 square kilometres, held 1,055,450 people at the 2011 Census and recorded a literacy rate of 86.0 percent.

Census figures below are from 2011, the last completed count. The Census of India website now carries material for Census 2027, including a self-enumeration facility, and its numbers will replace them.

How Chandigarh came to be built

Partition left East Punjab without a capital, because Lahore went to Pakistan, a division traced in the piece on the Radcliffe Line. The Chandigarh Administration’s history says the Punjab government appointed a committee in 1948 under its Chief Engineer, P. L. Verma, which found no existing town suitable. It cited military vulnerability, a shortage of drinking water and the difficulty of absorbing refugees. In March 1948 the Punjab government, in consultation with the Government of India, approved the foothills of the Shivalik range for the new capital. The city takes its name from a Chandi temple near the site.

An American firm, Mayer, Whittlesey and Glass, was hired in 1950. Albert Mayer and Matthew Nowicki drew a fan-shaped plan, but Nowicki died in an air accident and Mayer stepped back. In 1951 the work went to a team led by Le Corbusier, with Maxwell Fry, Jane B. Drew and his cousin Pierre Jeanneret, backed by young Indian architects including M. N. Sharma. The foundation stone was laid in 1952. The Administration quotes Jawaharlal Nehru’s founding instruction that the city be “symbolic of freedom of India unfettered by the traditions of the past”.

The plan is built on the sector, a neighbourhood of 800 by 1,200 metres meant to hold its own shops, school and health centre. Roads follow a hierarchy that Le Corbusier called the 7Vs. The Administration says the plan was meant to be built in two phases for half a million people, with sectors 1 to 30 first and sectors 31 to 47 later. The head of the plan is the Capitol Complex, where the Secretariat, the High Court and the Legislative Assembly stand apart across large plazas. The Open Hand, a metal sculpture at its centre, is the city’s emblem.

The High Court started functioning at Chandigarh in 1954, and Nehru formally inaugurated its building on 19 March 1955, according to the court’s own Golden Jubilee exhibition text. From 1952 to 1966 the city was the capital of undivided Punjab.

How it became a union territory and a shared capital

The Punjab Reorganisation Act, 1966, came into force on 1 November 1966, a day section 2(b) names as the “appointed day”. It carved Haryana out of Punjab and sent some hill areas to Himachal Pradesh. The Administration says both Punjab and Haryana claimed the new city as capital, so the Centre made it a union territory under section 4 of the Act while the question was pending. Section 4 formed the territory from the Manimajra and Manauli kanungo circles of Kharar tahsil in Ambala district.

The city then became the capital of both states. Section 29 of the Act provides “a common High Court for the States of Punjab and Haryana and for the Union territory of Chandigarh”, which Article 231 of the Constitution permits Parliament to create. The courts explainer describes how a High Court fits into the judiciary. The Administration adds that the laws in force in Punjab on the day before the Act continue to apply in the territory.

How Chandigarh is governed

Under Article 239(1), a union territory is administered by the President through an administrator. Article 239(2) lets the President appoint the Governor of an adjoining state to that post, and the Governor then acts independently of his own council of ministers. Chandigarh used a Chief Commissioner until 31 May 1984. On 1 June 1984 the Governor of Punjab took over as Administrator, and the Chief Commissioner became the Adviser to the Administrator, the Administration says. The Punjab piece covers that year in the state.

Chandigarh has no legislative assembly, and Article 240, which lets the President make regulations for some territories, does not name it. Under Article 246(4), Parliament can legislate for any territory outside a state on any subject, including those on the State List. The union territories comparison sets Chandigarh beside the other seven.

Its voice in Parliament is one Lok Sabha seat, which section 23 of the 1966 Act created as a single constituency. Article 81(1)(b) allows union territories up to 20 members in the House in total, and the Lok Sabha explainer covers the full count. The Fourth Schedule gives Chandigarh no Rajya Sabha seat. The Administration’s statistical abstract counts 648,266 electors on 31 March 2025, and turnout in the 2024 Lok Sabha election was 67.98 percent.

How officers are posted to the territory

The Administration is staffed largely by officers on deputation from Punjab and Haryana. The Minister of State for Home Affairs told the Lok Sabha on 5 April 2022, as The Tribune reported, that “Deputation posts are filled as per the provisions contained in the Recruitment Rules of the respective posts and cadres” and that “there is no specific percentage prescribed for deputation of officers to the UT”. The reply said certain IAS, IPS and department-head posts are filled mainly from the two states in light of a Home Ministry office memorandum of 4 November 1966.

The Punjab Vidhan Sabha’s resolution of 1 April 2022 describes the administration as traditionally staffed in a 60:40 Punjab and Haryana ratio, according to The Tribune, and says outside postings and central service rules disturb it. The two readings sit side by side in the record.

The people and the economy

Chandigarh is 97.3 percent urban, with a density of 9,258 people per square kilometre and a sex ratio of 818 women per 1,000 men, the Administration’s 2011 figures show. Literacy was 86.0 percent, 90.0 percent among men and 81.2 percent among women. Scheduled Castes were 18.9 percent of residents, and 22 villages lie within the Municipal Corporation limits. The population had grown 17.2 percent since 2001. The original plan was drawn for half a million residents, and the 2011 count for the whole territory was more than double that.

The Administration’s Statistical Abstract 2024 puts gross state domestic product at Rs 62,536 crore in 2023-24 at current prices, up 11.75 percent on the year, and 9.52 percent in real terms. Per capita income was Rs 4,53,457 at current prices, on a population estimate of 12.38 lakh. Services produce 89.4 percent of the territory’s value added in that year’s figures, with trade, repair, hotels and restaurants alone at 29.5 percent. Manufacturing is 2.9 percent and farming, forestry and fishing 0.6 percent. The abstract also lists cumulative registrations of 13,92,819 two-wheelers and four-wheelers by 2024, more than the 2011 Census counted residents.

What sets Chandigarh apart

The Administration’s own account of the 1966 settlement is the starting point: a city that is the capital of two states while being a territory itself. The Capitol Complex adds a second distinction, as the Indian component of the Le Corbusier World Heritage series. In a written Lok Sabha reply reported on 4 February 2025, the Culture Minister said the complex was inscribed as a transnational property in 2016 across seven countries (Argentina, France, Switzerland, Belgium, Germany, Japan and India). The same reply said the city as a whole has not been designated a World Heritage City.

The Rock Garden has a less formal origin. The Nek Chand Foundation says officials found the site in 1975, inside a protected forest where building was banned, and first wanted it demolished. After a debate, the Chandigarh Landscape Advisory Committee let the public visit, and it opened on 24 January 1976. The Administration now lists it with Sukhna Lake and the Government Museum as a major tourist attraction.

The question of the city’s future

Clause 7 of the Memorandum of Settlement signed on 24 July 1985 by Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and Sant Harchand Singh Longowal, then President of the Shiromani Akali Dal, says “The Capital Project Area of Chandigarh will go to Punjab”. It paired the transfer with a commission to pick Hindi-speaking areas of Punjab to go to Haryana, and set 26 January 1986 for both. The transfer has not taken place, and the Administration still describes the city as the capital of both states.

Both assemblies restated their positions in April 2022. The Punjab Vidhan Sabha asked on 1 April for an immediate transfer, arguing that when a state is divided its capital usually stays with the parent state. The Haryana Vidhan Sabha answered on 5 April that the move was not acceptable to the people of Haryana, asserted Haryana’s claim to the joint capital, and demanded the transfer of Hindi-speaking areas of Punjab to Haryana.

In November 2025 a proposed Constitution (131st Amendment) Bill would have brought Chandigarh under Article 240, which lets the President make regulations for union territories without legislatures. The Ministry of Home Affairs said on 23 November that it had no intention of bringing the Bill in the winter session, that no final decision had been taken, and that the proposal would not change Chandigarh’s governance structure, The Tribune reported. Parties in Punjab had objected, and the paper reported fears that the change could lead to a separate Lieutenant Governor. It recorded no reaction from Haryana.

On 1 December 2025 The Tribune reported that Haryana had sought a 10-acre plot in the city for a new Vidhan Sabha building, that the Administration had rejected an offer of 12 acres at Saketri in Panchkula in exchange, and that the Home Ministry had halted the project, according to its sources. The paper links the request to the expected delimitation, which it says could raise the Haryana Assembly from 90 seats to 126.