Rajasthan, India's Largest State at 3,42,239 Square Kilometres, Had More Installed Solar Capacity Than Any Other State in September 2026, 45,121 Megawatts, About a Quarter of the National Total

Rajasthan had 45,121 megawatts of installed solar capacity on 30 September 2026, more than any other state, according to the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE). Gujarat was next at 36,235 MW. The national total in the same table was 1,71,051 MW, so Rajasthan alone held about 26 per cent of it.

It is also the largest state by area. Table A-1 of the 2011 Census gives Rajasthan 3,42,239 square kilometres, ahead of Madhya Pradesh at 3,08,252, and a population of 6,85,48,437 at 200 people per square kilometre. Census figures in this article are from 2011, because the next census is under way.

How Rajasthan came to be a state

Before 1947 the area was a cluster of princely states plus the British-ruled district of Ajmer-Merwara, known together as Rajputana. The Rajasthan High Court’s own history says the state was formed between 17 March 1948 and 25 January 1950 by joining 19 princely states, a process the Court’s annual report says Home Minister Vallabhbhai Patel set in motion. Our account of Patel and the princely states tells how that negotiation ran across the country.

On 30 March 1949 Patel inaugurated the larger union in Jaipur, after Jaipur, Jodhpur, Bikaner and Jaisalmer joined the United States of Rajasthan, and the Court’s report says it came into existence on 7 April. A committee had reported three days earlier, on 27 March, recommending Jaipur as the capital and Jodhpur as the seat of the High Court. The Matsya Union merged on 15 May 1949 and completed the integration. When the Constitution took effect on 26 January 1950, Rajasthan was a Part B state, one of the categories the Constitution used before 1956.

The biggest change came on 1 November 1956. Under the States Reorganisation Act, the former Part C state of Ajmer and the Abu and Sunel Tappa areas were added, and the Sironj sub-division of Kota district went to Madhya Pradesh. A further Act, in force from 1 October 1959, moved some territory between Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh. The wider reorganisation is covered in our explainer on India’s states and Union territories.

How Rajasthan is governed

The Legislative Assembly has 200 seats. Article 170 allows a state Assembly of 60 to 500 members, and the Second Schedule to the Representation of the People Act, 1950 sets Rajasthan’s at 200. After the 2008 delimitation order, 34 are reserved for Scheduled Castes and 25 for Scheduled Tribes, up from 33 and 24.

Rajasthan has one House. Article 168 names the states that have a Legislative Council, and Rajasthan is not among them. The Assembly resolved on 18 April 2012 to ask for a 66-member council. A Bill reached the Rajya Sabha on 6 August 2013 and went to the Standing Committee on Law and Justice, which reported on 9 December 2013. PRS Legislative Research’s tracker lists nothing after that, and our guide to states with two Houses explains how a council is created.

In Parliament Rajasthan has 25 Lok Sabha seats, four reserved for Scheduled Castes and three for Scheduled Tribes, and 10 Rajya Sabha seats under the Constitution’s Fourth Schedule.

The state has 41 districts and seven divisions. That count dates from the cabinet’s decision of 28 December 2024, which cancelled nine of the districts and three of the divisions announced in 2023 and kept eight of the new districts, among them Balotra, Beawar, Deeg and Phalodi. Scroll reports that a state minister said the new units had been created without weighing finances, administrative need and law and order. The Congress, then in opposition, called the move short-sighted, and its former Chief Minister argued that smaller districts are easier to run and that the average district population had fallen from 35.42 lakh to 15.35 lakh after the 2023 districts were created.

Judicial work is split. Jodhpur is the principal seat of the High Court. The permanent bench at Jaipur dates from a Presidential order of 8 December 1976, after an earlier Jaipur bench was abolished in 1958. The Court’s history note gives a sanctioned strength of 50 judges. The official language is Hindi in the Devanagari script under the Rajasthan Official Language Act, 1956, which received the Governor’s assent on 28 December 1956.

What Rajasthan’s economy is made of

PRS Legislative Research’s analysis of the 2026-27 budget puts Rajasthan’s gross state domestic product (GSDP, the value of everything a state produces in a year) at Rs 17,01,190 crore in 2024-25. For 2025-26 it estimates real growth of 8.7 per cent against 7.4 per cent for India. Agriculture makes up 25.7 per cent of the economy at current prices, manufacturing 26.5 per cent and services 47.7 per cent.

Output per head is lower than the national figure. PRS estimates Rajasthan’s per capita GSDP in 2025-26 at Rs 2,25,200, up 9.1 per cent, against Rs 2,51,393 for India, up 7 per cent.

On the budget side, Rs 1,91,103 crore of the 2026-27 revenue receipts (59 per cent) is the state’s own and Rs 1,34,637 crore (41 per cent) comes from the Centre, which includes a Rs 90,446 crore share of central taxes.

The solar lead rests on desert land and large parks. MNRE’s table shows 39,363 MW of ground-mounted solar in Rajasthan, 2,568 MW of hybrid solar and 2,316 MW of rooftop solar, plus 5,815 MW of wind, for 51,596 MW of renewable power in all. NASA’s Earth Observatory describes the Bhadla Solar Park near Phalodi as 2,245 MW across more than 5,700 hectares, and says it helped Rajasthan pass Karnataka as the state with the most installed solar capacity.

Mining is the older base. The Indian Bureau of Mines’ Yearbook 2021 calls Rajasthan the richest state in the availability and variety of minerals, with about 50 produced in 2020-21, and the sole producer of lead and zinc ores, selenite and wollastonite. It puts the state’s share of the country’s resources at 89 per cent for lead and zinc ore, 88 per cent for silver ore and 63 per cent for marble, and calls Makrana a world-famous marble centre.

What sets Rajasthan apart

Three parts of the record set Rajasthan apart. The first is the campaign for the right to information. The Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS, the Workers and Peasants Strength Union) was formally founded on 1 May 1990, The Week reports, after three outsiders had moved into the village of Devdungri in 1987. At a meeting in Beawar in September 1995 it made what the magazine calls the first public demand for such a law, and in April 1996 a 40-day sit-in began at Beawar’s Chang Gate, which India Together says led to the National Campaign for People’s Right to Information. Rajasthan passed its own Right to Information Act in 2000, with assent on 11 May. It told an office to supply information within 30 days and listed what could be withheld. The national story that followed is in our guide to the Right to Information Act.

The second is a place in constitutional law. The Supreme Court’s judgment of 30 October 1964 records that the Rajasthan Tenancy Act, 1955 had been declared invalid, and that Parliament then passed the Seventeenth Amendment, adding 44 Acts to the Ninth Schedule so that land reform laws could not be struck down. Entries 55 and 56 of that Schedule are Rajasthan’s Tenancy Act and Zamindari and Biswedari Abolition Act, and its only explanatory note concerns the Tenancy Act. In Sajjan Singh v. State of Rajasthan, Chief Justice Gajendragadkar and Justices Wanchoo and Dayal upheld the amendment, while Justices Hidayatullah and Mudholkar wrote separately and left open whether Parliament could amend fundamental rights at all. Our account of the basic structure doctrine follows that question to the 1967 and 1973 rulings.

The third is heritage on the UNESCO list. The six Hill Forts of Rajasthan, inscribed on 21 June 2013, are Chittorgarh, Kumbhalgarh, Ranthambore, Gagron, Amber and Jaisalmer, and UNESCO says some run up to 20 kilometres around. The walled city of Jaipur was inscribed on 6 July 2019. UNESCO describes it as founded in 1727 by Sawai Jai Singh II on a grid plan, with most of its infrastructure finished between 1727 and 1731.

What comes next

A proviso to Article 82 says the allocation of Lok Sabha seats among the states need not be readjusted until the figures of the first census taken after 2026 have been published, so Rajasthan’s 25 seats stay as they are until then. PRS reports that the 2026-27 budget projects GSDP of Rs 21,52,100 crore at current prices and a fiscal deficit of Rs 79,493 crore, or 3.7 per cent of GSDP.