C. D. Deshmukh - Union Finance Minister and Resignation

Union Finance Minister and Resignation

Deshmukh held the office of Union Finance Minister from 1950 until 1956 when the Central Government reorganized the states in India on linguistic basis. The Central Government with Jawaharlal Nehru as the Prime Minister made, however, an exception by newly forming the State of Bombay which comprised the neighbouring Gujarati and overwhelmingly Marathi regions, the City of Mumbai, the nation's prime economic center, being made the new state's capital.

The large Marathi-speaking majority of the region took as exception to this and wished to have it as a part of the separate Marathi-speaking state to be called Maharashtra; the Gujarati region also being organized as a separate Gujarati speaking state to be called Gujarat.

After the Central Government announced the above scheme, Deshmukh, who was a Maharashtrian, resigned from the office of Union Finance Minister to register his protest against the idea of not letting the City of Mumbai be a part of a separate Marathi-speaking State of Maharashtra.

After the Marathi-speaking community's long, four-year struggle under the Samyukta Maharashtra Samiti, the Central Government finally partitioned in 1960, the bilingual State of Bombay into the Marathi speaking State of Maharashtra with the City of Bombay as its part, and the Gujarati speaking State of Gujarat. In 1995, the City of Bombay was renamed as Mumbai.

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