Delhi

"National Capital Territory" redirects here. For the generic term, see Capital districts and territories.
Not to be confused with New Delhi, the capital of India, entirely within the limits of Delhi.
For other uses, see Delhi (disambiguation).

Delhi
Megacity and union territory
National Capital Territory of Delhi
From top, left to right: Humayun's Tomb; Qutub Minar; Jama Masjid; Red Fort's Lahori gate; India Gate; Digambar Jain Mandir with Gauri Shankar temple in the background; St. James' Church; Hyderabad House; Lotus Temple, a Baháʼí House of Worship
Map
Interactive map of Delhi
Coordinates: 28°36′36″N 77°13′48″E / 28.61000°N 77.23000°E / 28.61000; 77.23000
CountryIndia
RegionNorth India
Capital, Delhi Sultanate1214
Capital, Mughal Empire1526, intermittently with Agra
New Delhi, capital, British Indian Empire12 December 1911
New Delhi, capital, Dominion of India1947
New Delhi, capital, Republic of India26 January 1950
Union Territory[1][2]1 November 1956
National Capital Territory[3]1 February 1992
Government
 • BodyGovernment of Delhi
 • Lt. GovernorVinai Kumar Saxena[4]
 • Chief MinisterAtishi Marlena Singh (AAP)
 • LegislatureUnicameral (70 seats)
 • Parliamentary constituency
Area
[5]
1,484 km2 (573 sq mi)
 • Water18 km2 (6.9 sq mi)
Elevation
200–250 m (650–820 ft)
Population
 (2011)[6]
16,787,941
 • Estimate 
(2024)[7]
21,588,000
 • Density11,312/km2 (29,298/sq mi)
 • Urban
[8]
16,349,831 (2nd)
 • Megacity
[6]
11,034,555 (2nd)
 • Metro (includes part of NCR) (2024)
[9]
33,807,400 (1st)
Languages
 • Official
 • Additional official
GDP (2023–24)
[11]
 • Megacity and union territory₹1,107,746 crore (US$130 billion)[11]
 • Per Capita₹461,910 (US$5,500)[12]
 • Metro (PPP)$521.5 billion[13]
Time zoneUTC+5.30 (IST)
PINs[14]
110000–110099
Area code+91 11
ISO 3166 codeIN-DL
Vehicle registrationDL
International AirportIndira Gandhi International Airport
Rapid TransitDelhi Metro
HDI (2018)Increase 0.839[15] (Very High) · 1st
Literacy (2011)86.21%[16]
Sex ratio (2011)868 ♀/1000 ♂[16]
Websitedelhi.gov.in

Delhi,[a] officially the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi, is a city and a union territory of India containing New Delhi, the capital of India. Straddling the Yamuna river, but spread chiefly to the west, or beyond its right bank, Delhi shares borders with the state of Uttar Pradesh in the east and with the state of Haryana in the remaining directions. Delhi became a union territory on 1 November 1956 and the NCT in 1995.[20] The NCT covers an area of 1,484 square kilometres (573 sq mi).[5] According to the 2011 census, Delhi's city proper population was over 11 million,[6][21] while the NCT's population was about 16.8 million.[8]

Delhi's urban agglomeration, which includes the satellite cities Ghaziabad, Faridabad, Gurgaon, Noida, Greater Noida and YEIDA city located in an area known as the National Capital Region (NCR), has an estimated population of over 28 million, making it the largest metropolitan area in India and the second-largest in the world (after Tokyo).[22]

The topography of the medieval fort Purana Qila on the banks of the river Yamuna matches the literary description of the citadel Indraprastha in the Sanskrit epic Mahabharata; however, excavations in the area have revealed no signs of an ancient built environment. From the early 13th century until the mid-19th century, Delhi was the capital of two major empires, the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughal Empire, which covered large parts of South Asia. All three UNESCO World Heritage Sites in the city, the Qutub Minar, Humayun's Tomb, and the Red Fort, belong to this period. Delhi was the early centre of Sufism and Qawwali music. The names of Nizamuddin Auliya and Amir Khusrau are prominently associated with it. The Khariboli dialect of Delhi was part of a linguistic development that gave rise to the literature of Urdu and later Modern Standard Hindi. Major Urdu poets from Delhi include Mir Taqi Mir and Mirza Ghalib. Delhi was a notable centre of the Indian Rebellion of 1857. In 1911, New Delhi, a southern region within Delhi, became the capital of the British Indian Empire. During the Partition of India in 1947, Delhi was transformed from a Mughal city to a Punjabi one, losing two-thirds of its Muslim residents, in part due to the pressure brought to bear by arriving Hindu and Sikh refugees from western Punjab.[23] After independence in 1947, New Delhi continued as the capital of the Dominion of India, and after 1950 of the Republic of India.

Delhi ranks fifth among the Indian states and union territories in human development index,[24] and has the second-highest GDP per capita in India (after Goa).[11] Although a union territory, the political administration of the NCT of Delhi today more closely resembles that of a state of India, with its own legislature, high court and an executive council of ministers headed by a chief minister. New Delhi is jointly administered by the union government of India and the local government of Delhi, and serves as the capital of the nation as well as the NCT of Delhi. Delhi is also the centre of the National Capital Region, which is an "interstate regional planning" area created in 1985.[25][26] Delhi hosted the inaugural 1951 Asian Games, the 1982 Asian Games, the 1983 Non-Aligned Movement summit, the 2010 Men's Hockey World Cup, the 2010 Commonwealth Games, the 2012 BRICS summit, the 2023 G20 summit, and was one of the major host cities of the 2011 and 2023 Cricket World Cups.

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference 7thAmend56 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference ReorgAct56 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference NCTact was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ "Vinai Kumar Saxena appointed Delhi Lieutenant Governor after Anil Bajial's exit". Hindustan Times. 23 May 2022. Archived from the original on 23 May 2022. Retrieved 23 May 2022.
  5. ^ a b "Delhi Info". unccdcop14india.gov.in. Archived from the original on 29 November 2020. Retrieved 24 November 2020.
  6. ^ a b c "Census of India: Provisional Population Totals Paper 1 of 2011, NCT of Delhi". Census of India. 2011. Archived from the original on 19 January 2022. Retrieved 12 February 2022.
  7. ^ https://delhiplanning.delhi.gov.in/sites/default/files/Planning/tables.pdf
  8. ^ a b "Delhi (India): Union Territory, Major Agglomerations & Towns – Population Statistics in Maps and Charts". City Population. Archived from the original on 2 March 2017. Retrieved 28 February 2017.
  9. ^ https://worldpopulationreview.com/cities/india/delhi
  10. ^ a b "Official Language Act 2000" (PDF). Government of Delhi. 2 July 2003. Archived from the original (PDF) on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 17 July 2015.
  11. ^ a b c "ECONOMIC SURVEY OF DELHI 2023 – 24" (PDF). delhiplanning.delhi.gov.in.
  12. ^ https://delhiplanning.delhi.gov.in/sites/default/files/Planning/economic_survey_of_delhi_2023-24_english.pdf
  13. ^ "Delhi NCT, India". C40 Cities. Archived from the original on 14 March 2024. Retrieved 25 March 2024.
  14. ^ "Find Pin Code". Department of Posts. Archived from the original on 3 June 2019. Retrieved 5 June 2019.
  15. ^ "Gendering Human Development". Archived from the original on 26 March 2023. Retrieved 27 January 2023.
  16. ^ a b "Census 2011 (Final Data) – Demographic details, Literate Population (Total, Rural & Urban)" (PDF). planningcommission.gov.in. Planning Commission, Government of India. Archived from the original (PDF) on 27 January 2018. Retrieved 3 October 2018.
  17. ^ Platts, John Thompson (1960) [First published 1884]. A dictionary of Urdu, classical Hindi, and English. London: Oxford University Press. p. 546. ISBN 0-19-864309-8. OCLC 3201841. Archived from the original on 9 January 2022. Retrieved 12 November 2020.
  18. ^ "The Constitution (Sixty-Ninth Amendment) Act, 1991". Ministry of Law and Justice, Government of India. Archived from the original on 21 August 2016. Retrieved 23 November 2014.
  19. ^ Habib, Irfan (1999). The agrarian system of Mughal India, 1556–1707. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-562329-1. Archived from the original on 1 January 2016. Retrieved 6 November 2015. The current Survey of India spellings are followed for place names except where they vary rather noticeably from the spellings in our sources: thus I read 'Dehli' not 'Delhi ...
  20. ^ Springer Nature Limited, ed. (2022), The Statesman's Yearbook 2023: The Politics, Cultures, and Economies of the World, London: Palgrave Macmillan, p. 589, ISBN 978-1-349-96055-2, Delhi became a Union Territory on 1 Nov. 1956 and was designated the National Capital Territory in 1995. Delhi has an area of 1,483 sq. km. Its population (2011 census) is 16,787,941.
  21. ^ "This study settles the Delhi versus Mumbai debate: The Capital's economy is streets ahead". 2 October 2018. Archived from the original on 21 December 2018. Retrieved 21 December 2018.
  22. ^ "The World's Cities in 2018" (PDF). United Nations. Archived (PDF) from the original on 31 August 2021. Retrieved 2 September 2021.
  23. ^
    • Talbot, Ian; Singh, Gurharpal (2009), The Partition of India, Cambridge University Press, pp. 118–119, ISBN 978-0-521-85661-4, archived from the original on 2 December 2021, retrieved 3 December 2021, It is now almost a cliché that the Partition transformed Delhi from a Mughal to a Punjabi city. The bitter experiences of the refugees at the hands of Islamists in Pakistan encouraged them to support right-wing Hindu parties. ... Trouble began in September (1947) after the arrival of refugees from Pakistan who were determined on revenge and driving Muslims out of properties which they could then occupy. Gandhi in his prayer meetings in Birla House denounced the 'crooked and ungentlemanly' squeezing out of Muslims who left for Pakistan. Despite these exhortations, two-thirds of the city's Muslims were to abandon India's capital eventually.
    • Pandey, Gyanendra (2001), "Folding the national into the local: Delhi 1947–1948", Remembering Partition: Violence, Nationalism and History in India, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 9780521807593
  24. ^ "Sub-national HDI – Area Database". Global Data Lab. Institute for Management Research, Radboud University. Archived from the original on 23 September 2018. Retrieved 25 September 2018.
  25. ^ "Rationale". ncrpb.nic.in. NCR Planning Board. Archived from the original on 16 December 2012. Retrieved 5 March 2017. The National Capital Region (NCR) in India was constituted under the NCRPB Act, 1985
  26. ^ "Census 2011" (PDF). National Capital Region Planning Board. National Informatics Centre. p. 3. Archived (PDF) from the original on 6 April 2016. Retrieved 26 March 2016.


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