Bastar District
Bastar District is a district of the
state of
Chhattisgarh in
central India.
Jagdalpur is the district headquarters. The district has an area of 8755.79 km². Bastar District is bounded on the northwest by
Rajnandgaon District, on the north by
Kanker District, on the northeast by
Dhamtari District, on the east by
Navarangpur and
Koraput districts of
Orissa state, on the south and southeast by
Dantewada District, and on the east by
Gadchiroli District of
Maharashtra state.
The population of the state is 1,302,253 (2001 census). 70% of the district's population are tribal peoples (
adivasis).
Administratively, the district is divided into four
tehsils, Jagdalpur,
Kondagaon,
Keshkal, and
Narainpur. The district has two municipalities, Jagdalpur and Kondgaon. Jagdalpur, the administrative headquarters, is a beautiful city having population of about 1.5
lakhs (150,000).
Bastar and Dantewada districts were formerly part of the
princely state of
Bastar. The state is described in
Nandini Sundar,
Subalterns and Sovereigns. After Indian independence in 1947, the princely states of Bastar and Kanker acceded to the
Government of India, and were merged to form Bastar District of Madhya Pradesh state. The district, which had an area of 39,114 km², was one of the largest in India. In 1999, the district was divided into the present-day districts of Bastar, Dantewada, and Kanker, which constitute
Bastar Division. In 2000, Bastar was one of the 16 Madhya Pradesh districts that formed the new state of Chhattisgarh.
The Chitrakoot and Teerathgarh waterfalls are situated close to Jagdalpur.
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Bastar District website
