Facts you need to know about Telangana, India's 29th state

Telangana, which became India’s 29th state on Monday, is not just the country’s 12th largest both in terms of population and area, but also the first to be carved out on a criteria that is not based on language.

Here follows some facts about the newborn state:

Location: Falls roughly between the two main rivers of the region, Krishna and Godavari

Neighbours: Shares boundaries with Andhra Pradesh to the south and east, Maharashtra to the north and northwest, Karnataka to the west and Chhattisgarh and Odisha to the north-east

Size: India’s 12th largest by population with 35.29 million people, roughly that of Canada — a ranking below Odisha and above Kerala

Area: Again India’s 12th largest with 114,840 sq km and comparable with England — just below Tamil Nadu and well above Bihar

Legislature: Bicameral with 119 seats in Assembly and 40 seats in Council

Assembly Representation: Telangana Rashtra Samithi 63, Congress 21, Telugu Desam 15, All India Majlis-E-Ittehadul Muslimeen seven, Bharatiya Janata Party five and others eight

Lok Sabha Representation: 17 seats

First Chief Minister: Kalvakuntla Chandrashekar Rao

First Governor: Ekkadu Srinivasan Lakshminarasimhan

Capital: Hyderabad (It will also be Andhra Pradesh capital for 10 years)

Other main Cities: Warangal, Nizamabad and Karimnagar

Religions: Hindus 86 per cent, Muslims 12.4 per cent, Christians 1.2 per cent

Language: As main spoken language Telugu 76 per cent, Urdu 12 per cent, others 12 per cent

Literacy: Male 75.6 per cent, female 58.77 per cent, overall 67.2 per cent