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History

As part of the partition of India in 1947, the former Indian province of Punjab was divided into two parts, the mostly Hindu and Sikh East Punjab in India, and the mostly Muslim West Punjab in Pakistan. The capital of undivided Punjab, Lahore, had become part of Pakistan after the partition. Instead of shifting the capital to an already existing and established city, Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India, envisioned an altogether new and modern city to be built to serve as the capital of Punjab. Partap Singh Kairon, then the Chief Minister of East Punjab, and Edward Nirmal Mangat Rai, then the Chief Secretary of East Punjab, were instrumental in creating Chandigarh as the capital of the state. In 1949, the American planner and architect Albert Mayer was commissioned to design a new city to be called "Chandigarh". The government carved out Chandigarh from about fifty Puadhi -speaking villages in the then-state of East Punjab, India. Shimla was the temporary capital of the state until Chandigarh was completed.

Albert Mayer developed a superblock -based city interspersed with green spaces, with an emphasis on cellular neighbourhoods and traffic segregation. His site plan took advantage of natural land characteristics; the land's gentle grade promoted proper drainage. Mayer stopped his work on the city after his architect-partner Matthew Nowicki died in a plane crash in 1950. Government officials recruited Le Corbusier to succeed Mayer and Nowicki, who utilised many elements of Mayer's original plan without attributing them to him. Le Corbusier designed many administration buildings, including the High Court, the Palace of Assembly, and the Secretariat Building. Le Corbusier also designed the general layout of the city, dividing it into sectors. Chandigarh hosts the largest of Le Corbusier's many Open Hand sculptures, standing 26 metres high. The Open Hand (La Main Ouverte) is a recurring motif in Le Corbusier's architecture, a sign for him of "peace and reconciliation. It is open to give and open to receive." It represents what Le Corbusier called the "Second Machine Age". Two of the six monuments planned in the Capitol Complex which has the High Court, the Assembly, and the Secretariat, remain incomplete. These include Geometric Hill and Martyrs Memorial. Drawings were made, and they were begun in 1956, but they were never completed.

The capital city was officially shifted from Shimla to Chandigarh on 21 September 1953, though Chandigarh was formally inaugurated by India's first president, Rajendra Prasad on 7 October 1953.

During excavations at the time of the building of the city, some Indus Valley artefacts were discovered, suggesting that the area that is today Chandigarh was home to some settlements of the Indus Valley civilisation. On 1 November 1966, after a long-drawn movement demanding the formation of a Punjabi state, the former state of Punjab was split in two. The western and northern mostly Punjabi -speaking portion became the present-day state of Punjab, while the eastern and southern Hindi- and Haryanvi -speaking areas became Haryana. Chandigarh ended up being located on the border of the two states, and both of them moved to incorporate the city into their respective territories. However, the city of Chandigarh was controlled directly by the central government and was to serve as the shared capital of the two states until a resolution could be reached.

It has been noted by industrialists that large real-estate projects have stagnated since the creation of Chandigarh in Punjab and Haryana as an economic rival city would be perceived as a city that could be used as capital instead of Chandigarh and hence relinquishing the state of rights over Chandigarh.

Present-day Chandigarh was also the site of a short-lived late 18th-century principality, with a small fort at Mani Majra. Many villages that predate the city are still inhabited within the modern blocks of some sectors, including Burail and Attawa, while several other such villages lie on the margins of the city.