Lalitpur District, Uttar Pradesh
Lalitpur District is one of the
districts of
Uttar Pradesh state of
India. Lalitpur District is a part of
Jhansi Division.
Lalitpur is the main town and administrative headquarters.
The district has a population of population 977,447 (2001 census). It is joined to
Jhansi District of Uttar Pradesh by a narrow corridor to the northeast, but is otherwise almost completely surrounded by
Madhya Pradesh state; to the east lies
Tikamgarh District, to the south
Sagar District, and to the west
Ashoknagar and
Shivpuri districts. Lalitpur,
Jalaun, and Jhansi districts form
Jhansi Division.
Lalitpur is divided into three
tehsils, Lalitpur,
Mehroni, and
Talbehat; four towns, Lalitpur, Mehroni, Talbehat, and Pali; and 754 villages. In 2004 the district magistrate is Umadher Dwivedi, and the Superintendent of police is L.V.A. Dev Kumar, and the District Information Officer is Murlidhar Singh.
The district forms a portion of the hill country of
Bundelkhand, sloping down from the outliers of the
Vindhya Range on the south to the tributaries of the
Yamuna River on the north. The extreme south is composed of parallel rows of long and narrow-ridged hills. Through the intervening valleys the rivers flow down impetuously over ledges of granite or quartz. North of the hilly region, the rocky granite chains gradually lose themselves in clusters of smaller hills.
The
Betwa River forms the northern and western boundary of the district, and most of the district lies within its watershed. The
Jamni River, a tributary of the Betwa, forms the eastern boundary. The
Dhasan River forms the district's southeastern boundary, and the southeastern portion of the district lies within its watershed.
The district is now a part of the recessionist movement originating in southern Uttar Pradesh and northern Madhya Pradesh to create a separate state of Bundelkhand, as this area is traditionally called by locals.
Lalitpur District was formerly part of the state of
Chanderi, founded in the 17th century by a
Bundela Rajput who was descended from Rudra Pratap of
Orchha. Chanderi, along with most of Bundelkhand, came under
Maratha hegemony in the 18th century.
Daulat Rao Sindhia of neighboring
Gwalior annexed Chanderi state in 1811. In 1844, the former state of Chanderi was ceded to the
British, and became the
Chanderi District of British India, with Lalitpur town as the district headquarters. The British lost the district in the
Indian Rebellion of 1857, and it was not reconquered until late 1858. In 1861, the portion of the district west of the Betwa, including Chanderi, was returned to Gwalior, and the remainder was renamed Lalitpur District. Lalitpur District was made part of Jhansi District from 1891 to 1974.
*Hunter, William Wilson, James Sutherland Cotton, Richard Burn, William Stevenson Meyer, eds. (1909).
Imperial Gazetteer of India, vol. 9. Oxford, Clarendon Press.
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Lalitpur District web site
