Andhra Pradesh at 70: Potti Sriramulu’s 58-day fast, and a formation day that has shifted with governments

Andhra Pradesh turned 70 on Sunday, 1 November 2026. On that date in 1956, Andhra State absorbed the Telugu-speaking Telangana districts of Hyderabad State, took the name Andhra Pradesh and made Hyderabad its capital. The journey had begun four years earlier in a house in Madras, where a 51-year-old Gandhian, Potti Sriramulu, vowed not to eat until Telugu speakers got a state of their own.

Fifty-eight days in Madras

Born in 1901, on 16 March, Sriramulu grew up in Madras. He trained as a sanitary engineer in Bombay and worked for the Great Indian Peninsula Railway, until the deaths of his wife and newborn child turned him to Gandhi. He spent time at the Sabarmati Ashram, was jailed for joining the Salt Satyagraha of 1930 and imprisoned again in the Quit India years. In Nellore in 1946 he fasted twice to get temples, the Venugopala Swamy temple among them, opened to Dalits.

His last fast began on 19 October 1952, at Bulusu Sambamurti’s home in Madras, with one demand: a state for the Andhras. Delhi gave no clear answer. He died on the night of 15 December 1952, the 58th day. Anger swept the Telugu districts, and seven people died in police firing at Anakapalle and Vijayawada. On 19 December, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru told Parliament the Andhra State would be created.

The state came into being on 1 October 1953, carved from Madras State. Kurnool was the capital and Tanguturi Prakasam the first Chief Minister. It was the first state drawn on language lines, and it stirred similar demands elsewhere. In December 1953 the Centre set up the States Reorganisation Commission under Justice Fazl Ali. Its report of September 1955 suggested keeping Telangana apart for some years, but the States Reorganisation Act joined the two regions on 1 November 1956.

One state, three dates

For 58 years the undivided state marked its birthday on 1 November. Telangana went its own way on 2 June 2014, and Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu’s government then picked 2 June as formation day. Each year on that date his government held a Nava Nirmana Deeksha, a pledge to build the state anew after the division.

Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy’s YSR Congress government, in office from 2019, went back to 1 November. Its function that year was the first official one on the date in five years, and the practice held until 2023. After Naidu regained power in 2024, 1 November passed that year without an official state function, and the YSR Congress, by then in opposition, protested.

Naidu has stressed another date. At a meeting in Vijayawada on Monday, 15 December 2025, the anniversary of Sriramulu’s death, he declared that it would from then on be kept as the Day of Sacrifice. He tied the fast to Andhra State in 1953 and Andhra Pradesh in 1956, and said some people were making a political issue of the dates.

The 70th anniversary fell on a Sunday when voters in 92 towns were electing municipal councils. President Droupadi Murmu sent formation day wishes to Andhra Pradesh and 12 more states and Union Territories, and in some towns Vasavi Club members garlanded statues of Sriramulu.

The Amarajeevi’s name

Telugu people call him Amarajeevi, the one who never dies. Nellore district officially carries his name as Sri Potti Sriramulu Nellore district. The Telugu University in Hyderabad, named after him when N.T. Rama Rao was Chief Minister, lost the name on 17 March 2025, when the Telangana Assembly renamed it for the writer and freedom fighter Suravaram Pratapa Reddy. Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy said he would ask the Centre to name the Cherlapally railway terminal after Sriramulu.

The state’s year of events for the 125th anniversary of his birth ended on Monday, 16 March 2026, when Naidu unveiled a bronze Sriramulu, 58 feet tall, in Amaravati’s Shakhamuru Park, one foot for each day of the fast, and named it the Statue of Sacrifice. The government has also promised memorials at the Chennai building where he fasted and at his house in Nellore. Under the 2025 decision, the next Day of Sacrifice is Tuesday, 15 December 2026.