A Brief History of Maharashtra Day :

Much of the world celebrates May 1 as International Workers' Day. In India, the first day of May is Maharashtra Day.

On this day, 54 years ago, the modern-day state of Maharashtra was created.

The western states of Gujarat and Maharashtra, spread across an area of almost 194 square miles along the western coastline of India, were the last to be redrawn along linguistic lines.

In the mid-1950s, a regional movement known as the Samyukta Maharashtra Andolan started agitations, demanding a separate Marathi-speaking state. The protests ended in 1960 when the Bombay Reorganization Act was passed by India's Parliament to divide the multilingual state of Bombay into Gujarat and Maharashtra, with Ahmedabad and Bombay serving as their respective capitals. The legislation came into effect on May 1, 1960.