Indira Gandhi's Chandigarh award

Who: Prime Minister Indira Gandhi; Sant Fateh Singh, who fasted for Chandigarh; Chief Minister Gurnam Singh; the Akali Dal; and an all-party action committee under the Jana Sangh leader Baldev Prakash.

What: The Shah Commission had put Chandigarh in Haryana in 1966, and Sant Fateh Singh's fast of December 1966 ended on assurances about it that, Gurmit Singh writes, the Union Home Minister soon denied in Parliament. Pressure rose in 1969. Darshan Singh Pheruman fasted from 15 August and died on 27 October after 74 days. On 24 November the Sant announced a fast from 26 January 1970, with self-immolation on 1 February if he survived. He began the fast on 26 January.

On 29 January 1970 Indira Gandhi announced her award. The capital project area of Chandigarh would go to Punjab. A part of Fazilka tehsil, including Abohar, would go to Haryana, with Rs 10 crore for a new capital, according to Gurmit Singh and Khushwant Singh. Khushwant Singh adds a strip of land one furlong wide at Khandukhera in Muktsar tehsil as a corridor, and writes that at least 60 of the 115 villages of the Fazilka-Abohar region had recorded Punjabi as their language. A commission would consider other claims, and the award was to be carried out in 1975. The President's Address of 20 February 1970 called the decisions on Chandigarh and Fazilka just and fair.

The Sant ended his fast on 29 January at 5.30 p.m. according to Gurmit Singh, and on 30 January according to Grewal and the Encyclopaedia of Sikhism. Grewal writes that the All-Parties Action Committee under Baldev Prakash denounced the award as unjust and illogical but asked him to give up the fast because Chandigarh had been awarded to Punjab. Gurmit Singh writes that crowds opposed ending the fast, burnt the Sant's portraits at the SGPC office and accused him of bartering away one of the richest tracts of the state. Both the Sant and Gurnam Singh called the award a victory, Khushwant Singh writes, and relations between them broke. Gurnam Singh's ministry was defeated on 25 March 1970 and Parkash Singh Badal became Chief Minister on 27 March.

Where: Chandigarh and the Fazilka and Abohar area, the places the award dealt with.

Why it mattered: The award gave Punjab the city but took Fazilka and Abohar, and it was never carried out. The Government's 1984 White Paper says it could not be implemented “because of the subsequent change in the attitude in the State”. Khushwant Singh calls the award unfair to Punjab and writes that, of the original states of the Union, only Punjab had to share its capital and have a corridor carved out of its territory.