With the Centre considering 10 proposals for separate states including Saurasthra in Gujarat, activists are seeing renewed hope for fulfilling their dreams. The activists are set to meet soon to devise strategies to fight for their own state.

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In 2001 the Saurashtra Sankalan Samiti, a local body of activists, had started a movement to separate the Saurashtra region from Gujarat but in vain.

But now following Centre’s announcement, the body plans to organised a meeting of social and industrial associations of Saurashtra.

Created with the support of around 300 different business, industrial and social associations of Saurashtra and Kutch, the samiti has been working on several issues including VAT and octroi. It now hopes that all its previous associations will help its movement of a separate Saurashtra state.

“We are planning to hold a meeting with all the social and industrial bodies to discuss the issue. We are neither looking for nor expecting any support from political parties but we will be open to take their help,” says Parag Tejura, president of Saurashtra Sankalan Samiti, who first took the matter in hands in 2001.

According to Tejura, Saurashtra has always been ignored by both central and state governments. “Many facilities have not yet come up despite Saurashtra being a heavy tax paying region,” he adds.

Railway, airport and airline services, port development, highway road development, tourism, fisheries, water, education, establishment of heavy industries, special economic zones, agriculture, IT industries are among the areas where Saurashtra has been ignored since Independence. “The region is an engineering hub but no SEZ has been developed by the government,” points out Tejura.

Tejura agrees that the body also needs to create more awareness among the public as well.

With Rajkot as its capital, Saurashtra is a bunch of seven cities and has a large sea coast. After Independence, around 217 princely states of Kathiawar and Saurashtra, including the former kingdom of Junagadh, were grouped together to form the province of Saurashtra. On November 1, 1956, Saurashtra was merged into Bombay state, and later, in 1960, it became a part of Gujarat.

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