The Government of India Act 1912 was an act of the

Parliament of the United Kingdom The Parliament of the United Kingdom is the supreme legislative body of the United Kingdom, the Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories. It meets at the Palace of Westminster, London. It alone possesses legislative suprema ...

, which made changes to the governance of

British India The provinces of India, earlier presidencies of British India and still earlier, presidency towns, were the administrative divisions of British governance on the Indian subcontinent. Collectively, they have been called British India. In one ...

. It received royal assent on 25 June 1912. The act addressed several problems related to the reorganization of Bengal. In 1905, the

Bengal Presidency The Bengal Presidency, officially the Presidency of Fort William and later Bengal Province, was a subdivision of the British Empire in India. At the height of its territorial jurisdiction, it covered large parts of what is now South Asia and ...

was divided in two, and the eastern portion combined with Assam Province to become the new province of

Eastern Bengal and Assam Eastern Bengal and Assam was an administrative subdivision (province) of British India between 1905 and 1912. Headquartered in the city of Dacca, it covered territories in what are now Bangladesh, Northeast India and Northern West Bengal. Hist ...

. The division generated considerable opposition and unrest, and in 1911 Bengal was reorganized again into three provinces - Bengal (present-day

West Bengal West Bengal (, Bengali: ''Poshchim Bongo'', , abbr. WB) is a state in the eastern portion of India. It is situated along the Bay of Bengal, along with a population of over 91 million inhabitants within an area of . West Bengal is the fou ...

and

Bangladesh Bangladesh (}, ), officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh, is a country in South Asia. It is the eighth-most populous country in the world, with a population exceeding 165 million people in an area of . Bangladesh is among the mos ...

), Bihar and Orissa, and

Assam Assam (; ) is a state in northeastern India, south of the eastern Himalayas along the Brahmaputra and Barak River valleys. Assam covers an area of . The state is bordered by Bhutan and Arunachal Pradesh to the north; Nagaland and Manipur ...

. The first section of the act modified the powers of the newly appointed Governor of Bengal. Until 1912, the

Governor-General of India The Governor-General of India (1773–1950, from 1858 to 1947 the Viceroy and Governor-General of India, commonly shortened to Viceroy of India) was the representative of the monarch of the United Kingdom and after Indian independence in 1 ...

also served as Governor of

. In March 1912, the

Secretary of State for India His (or Her) Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for India, known for short as the India Secretary or the Indian Secretary, was the British Cabinet minister and the political head of the India Office responsible for the governance of th ...

proclaimed that the reunified Bengal Province would be a province under its own governor. The Act gave the new governor the same powers as the governors of

Bombay Mumbai (, ; also known as Bombay — the official name until 1995) is the capital city of the Indian state of Maharashtra and the ''de facto'' financial centre of India. According to the United Nations, as of 2018, Mumbai is the second-m ...

and Madras, including acting as governor-general in the governor-general's absence, the salary of the governor and his council, and the number and qualifications of members of the executive councils. The second section of the Act permitted the immediate creation of a legislative council for the new province of Bihar and Orissa, and amended the

Indian Councils Act 1909 The Indian Councils Act 1909, commonly known as the Morley–Minto or Minto–Morley Reforms, was an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that brought about a limited increase in the involvement of Indians in the governance of British In ...

to eliminate Parliamentary review of newly created legislative councils for provinces under a lieutenant-governor. The third section of the Act permitted the creation of legislative councils for provinces under chief commissioners. This authority was used to establish a legislative council for

Assam Province Assam Province was a province of British India, created in 1912 by the partition of the Eastern Bengal and Assam Province. Its capital was in Shillong. The Assam territory was first separated from Bengal in 1874 as the 'North-East Frontier' n ...

on 14 November 1912, and for the Central Provinces on 10 November 1913.Ilbert, Sir Courtenay Peregrine. ''The Government of India'', Third Edition, revised and updated. Clarendon Press, 1922. pp. 119-122.

References

{{reflist Acts of the Parliament of the United Kingdom concerning India 1912 in India United Kingdom Acts of Parliament 1912 June 1912 events