# List of districts of Andhra Pradesh

The state of Andhra Pradesh has 26 districts. Visakhapatnam district is the smallest district in area while Prakasam district is the largest. Nellore district is the most populous whereas Parvathipuram Manyam district is the least populous district. The districts are further divided into two or more revenue divisions, which are further subdivided into mandals for administrative purposes.

## History

At the time of Independence the present day Andhra Pradesh was a part of the Madras State. The telugu speaking dominant regions Kostaandhra and Rayalaseema were separated from Madras State to form Andhra State in 1953.
As Andhra State, it consists of 11 districts, which are Anantapur, Chittoor, East Godavari, Guntur, Kadapa, Krishna, Kurnool, Nellore, Srikakulam, Visakhapatnam and West Godavari.
As a result of the 1956 States Reorganisation Act, the state's boundaries were re-organized following linguistic lines. On 1 November 1956, the Andhra State and the Telangana region of the Hyderabad State were merged to form the Andhra Pradesh which is retrospectively referred to as United Andhra Pradesh.
As united Andhra Pradesh, it consisted of 21 districts, with 10 districts of Telangana region. In the year 1959, Bhadrachalam and Nuguru Venkatapuram taluks of East Godavari district, which are on the other side of the Godavari River, were merged into Khammam district on grounds of geographical contiguity and administrative viability. Similarly Aswaraopeta part of West Godavari District was added to Khammam district and Munagala taluk belonging to Krishna district was added to Nalgonda district in the same year.
The number of districts became 23 with the formation of Prakasam district from the parts of Guntur, Nellore and Kurnool districts in 1970 and Vizianagaram district from parts of Visakhapatnam and Srikakulam districts in 1979.
After the bifurcation of the United Andhra Pradesh in 2014, the Andhra region now known as Andhra Pradesh was left with 13 districts but was given several tribal-dominated mandals from the Khammam district of the Telangana as part of the Polavaram project. These mandals were added to the East Godavari and West Godavari district's respectively.
On 26 January 2022, the Government of Andhra Pradesh proposed 13 new districts by issuing a draft notification under the Andhra Pradesh Districts (Formation) Act, 1974, Section 3(5). After taking the objections and suggestions received from the public into consideration, the government has published the final notification on 3 April 2022. With effect from 4 April 2022 the newly formed districts came into effect as specified in the schedule. At present there are 26 districts spread across 3 cultural regions: Uttaraandhra, Kostaandhra and Rayalaseema.

### Timeline

* (1953–1956)
* (1956–2014)
* (2014–2022)
* (2022–2023)
* (since 2023)

## Districts

The state is further divided into 26 districts, with North Andhra comprising six districts, Coastal Andhra comprising 12 districts, and Rayalaseema comprising eight districts. These districts are made up of 77 revenue divisions, 685 mandals and 13,324 village panchayats as part of the administrative organisation.
North Andhra:
* Alluri Sitharama Raju
* Anakapalli
* Parvathipuram Manyam
* Srikakulam
* Visakhapatnam
* Vizianagaram
Coastal Andhra:
* Bapatla
* Dr. B. R. Ambedkar Konaseema
* East Godavari
* Eluru
* Guntur
* Kakinada
* Krishna
* NTR
* Palnadu
* Prakasam
* Sri Potti Sriramulu Nellore
* West Godavari
Rayalaseema:
* Anantapur
* Annamayya
* Chittoor
* YSR Kadapa
* Kurnool
* Nandyal
* Sri Sathya Sai
* Tirupati
* Source: