New district of Tapi on Gujarat map

Schools and offices across the state will now have to replace their old maps. Directorate of Census Operations released new maps of Gujarat after the recently concluded Census 2011, in which Tapi is marked as a new district. Manish Bharadwaj, director of Census in the state has confirmed the change in official maps.

He said, "It is a routine exercise that after every Census the final map of the state prepared by the Census department is utilised for the administrative purposes. We have prepared Gujarat's political map, where the new Tapi district is shown. The 2001 census map has no mention of Tapi as a district because it was not in existence during that time. Similarly, Anand and Narmada are in those maps as they were created before 2001. Previously, Tapi was part of Surat district but from 2011 onwards, it will be shown as an independent district."

Moreover, 314 villages and one talukas are removed from this new map. According to Bharadwaj in Census 2001, there were 226 talukas and in 2011 there are 225 talukas. Also there were 18,539 villages in Census 2001 while in Census 2011 the number of villages has reduced by 314 and now there are 18,225 villages in the state. "As the city limits are increasing, nearby villages are merged into the cities and they become city suburbs instead of being a village," said Bharadwaj.