Central Provinces and Berar

The Central Provinces and Berar was a province of British India. The province comprised British conquests from the Mughals and Marathas in central India, and covered much of present-day Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra states. Its capital was Nagpur. The Central Provinces was formed in 1861 by the merger of the Saugor and Nerbudda Territories and Nagpur Province. The Marathi-speaking Berar region of the Hyderabad princely state was annexed to the Central Provinces in 1903 for administration and later to form the new Central Provinces and Berar on 24 October 1936. After Indian Independence in 1947, a number of princely states were merged into the Central Provinces and Berar, which, when the Constitution of India went into effect in 1950, became the new Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.

As is shown in by its name the province was situated in Centre of the Indian peninsula. It comprised large portions of the broad belt of hill and plateau, which separates the plains of the Ganges and the Deccan plateau. The Central Provinces and Berar were bounded on the north and northeast by the Central India Agency, including the Bundelkhand and Bagelkhand agencies, and along the northern edge of Sagar District by the United Provinces; on the west by the states of Bhopal, Indore, and Kandesh District of Bombay Presidency; on the south by Hyderabad State and the large zamindari estates of the Madras Presidency; and on the east by these latter estates and the tributary states of Bengal.