Districts of Andhra Pradesh — The 2022 Reorganisation and Regional Profiles

Why the Districts of Andhra Pradesh Matter for This Exam

For an AP SI or Constable aspirant, the district map of the state is not background trivia — it is operational geography. Police jurisdiction, revenue administration, court hierarchies and welfare delivery are all organised along district lines, and question-setters treat district facts (headquarters town, parent district, region, boundary neighbours) as a reliable, easily verifiable source of objective questions. The subject also carries a built-in "current affairs" dimension because the district map itself changed dramatically and recently: on 4 April 2022, Andhra Pradesh replaced its long-standing 13-district structure with 26 districts, effectively doubling the number of administrative units without changing the state's outer boundary by a single village. Any aspirant preparing in 2025-26 must know both the old 13-district system (because a great deal of legacy data, older textbooks and even some government forms still reference it) and the new 26-district system (because that is the live, functioning administrative reality being tested). The sheer density of factual pairings involved — district name, headquarters town, parent district, region, neighbouring states and districts, and the crop or mineral or landmark the district is best known for — makes this one of the highest-yield static-GK topics in the whole syllabus. A well-drilled candidate can convert nearly every district-based question into a fast, confident mark rather than an educated guess, and that reliability is exactly what this chapter is built to deliver.

The Old Order: Andhra Pradesh's 13 Districts

From the state's reorganisation in 1956 (and with only minor boundary tweaks thereafter) until April 2022, Andhra Pradesh functioned with 13 districts, split by long-standing convention into two broad cultural-geographic regions: Coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema. Telangana, the third historical region, ceased to be part of Andhra Pradesh when the separate state of Telangana was carved out in June 2014.

The 13 pre-2022 districts were: Srikakulam, Vizianagaram, Visakhapatnam, East Godavari, West Godavari, Krishna, Guntur, Prakasam, Sri Potti Sriramulu (SPS) Nellore, Kurnool, Anantapur, YSR Kadapa and Chittoor. Of these, the first nine belonged to the Coastal Andhra region and the last four to Rayalaseema. This 13-district framework is still useful to know because many welfare scheme names, older police range boundaries and census-era statistics are indexed to it.

The 2022 Reorganisation: What Changed and Why

The Andhra Pradesh government, under the Andhra Pradesh Districts (Formation) Act, 2022, restructured the state into 26 districts with effect from 4 April 2022. The stated rationale was administrative decentralisation — bringing the district collector's office and the office of the Superintendent of Police physically closer to citizens, improving the speed of revenue and welfare-scheme delivery, and aligning the administrative map more closely with parliamentary and assembly constituency boundaries so that a district could, in most cases, be built up from whole constituencies rather than fragments of them. As a matter of exam-relevant technique, the reorganisation was almost entirely a splitting exercise: existing large districts were subdivided along existing revenue-division lines, so nearly every new district's territory is fully contained within the boundary of an old district (or, in a few cases, was assembled from parts of two neighbouring old districts).

The number of districts exactly doubled, from 13 to 26. Of the 26, eighteen fall within the Coastal Andhra region and eight fall within Rayalaseema — this 18:8 split mirrors the earlier 9:4 split of the 13-district era. Every one of the 13 old districts was broken up; none survived entirely unchanged in name and boundary, although several new districts retained a legacy name (East Godavari, West Godavari, Krishna, Guntur, Prakasam, Kurnool, Anantapur, Chittoor) even though their geographic extent is now smaller than before, since a portion of each was hived off to form a new neighbouring district.

A useful way to remember the split: in the northern coastal belt, Srikakulam, Vizianagaram and Visakhapatnam (three old districts) became six new districts — Srikakulam, Parvathipuram Manyam, Vizianagaram, Visakhapatnam, Anakapalli and Alluri Sitharama Raju. In the central Godavari–Krishna–Guntur belt, East Godavari, West Godavari, Krishna and Guntur (four old districts) became ten new districts — Kakinada, East Godavari, Konaseema, West Godavari, Eluru, Krishna, NTR, Guntur, Bapatla and Palnadu. Prakasam and Nellore essentially retained their old boundaries with only modest adjustment. In Rayalaseema, Kurnool, Anantapur, YSR Kadapa and Chittoor (four old districts) became eight new districts — Kurnool, Nandyal, Anantapur, Sri Sathya Sai, YSR Kadapa, Annamayya, Chittoor and Tirupati.

Reference Table: The 26 Districts of Andhra Pradesh

The table below lists all 26 districts with their headquarters town and the broader region each belongs to. Headquarters and parentage for the large, long-established districts (Srikakulam, Vizianagaram, Visakhapatnam, East Godavari, Krishna, Guntur, Prakasam, Nellore, Kurnool, Anantapur, Chittoor) are well documented and stated here with confidence. For a handful of the newly created districts — particularly the tribal Eastern Ghats district of Alluri Sitharama Raju, and one or two others where the government's own notifications and subsequent local reporting have occasionally used more than one town name during the transition — the headquarters given below reflects the most consistently reported designation; aspirants preparing intensively for an imminent exam should cross-check the very latest AP government notification or a current-year official handbook for any single-town ambiguity before treating it as unshakeable fact.

#	District	Headquarters	Region	Formed mainly from (old district)
1	Srikakulam	Srikakulam	Coastal Andhra	Srikakulam
2	Parvathipuram Manyam	Parvathipuram	Coastal Andhra	Srikakulam / Vizianagaram (tribal Manyam belt)
3	Vizianagaram	Vizianagaram	Coastal Andhra	Vizianagaram
4	Visakhapatnam	Visakhapatnam	Coastal Andhra	Visakhapatnam
5	Anakapalli	Anakapalli	Coastal Andhra	Visakhapatnam
6	Alluri Sitharama Raju	Paderu (agency headquarters)	Coastal Andhra (Eastern Ghats agency tract)	Visakhapatnam / East Godavari (hill/tribal mandals)
7	Kakinada	Kakinada	Coastal Andhra	East Godavari
8	East Godavari	Rajamahendravaram (Rajahmundry)	Coastal Andhra	East Godavari
9	Konaseema (Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Konaseema)	Amalapuram	Coastal Andhra	East Godavari (Godavari delta islands)
10	West Godavari	Bhimavaram	Coastal Andhra	West Godavari
11	Eluru	Eluru	Coastal Andhra	West Godavari / Krishna
12	Krishna	Machilipatnam	Coastal Andhra	Krishna
13	NTR	Vijayawada	Coastal Andhra	Krishna
14	Guntur	Guntur	Coastal Andhra	Guntur
15	Bapatla	Bapatla	Coastal Andhra	Guntur
16	Palnadu	Narasaraopet	Coastal Andhra	Guntur
17	Prakasam	Ongole	Coastal Andhra	Prakasam
18	Sri Potti Sriramulu (SPS) Nellore	Nellore	Coastal Andhra	Nellore
19	Kurnool	Kurnool	Rayalaseema	Kurnool
20	Nandyal	Nandyal	Rayalaseema	Kurnool
21	Anantapur	Anantapuram	Rayalaseema	Anantapur
22	Sri Sathya Sai	Puttaparthi	Rayalaseema	Anantapur
23	YSR (Kadapa)	Kadapa	Rayalaseema	YSR Kadapa
24	Annamayya	Rayachoti	Rayalaseema	YSR Kadapa
25	Chittoor	Chittoor	Rayalaseema	Chittoor
26	Tirupati	Tirupati	Rayalaseema	Chittoor / Nellore (temple town and coastal taluks)

Regional Grouping: Coastal Andhra vs Rayalaseema

Coastal Andhra runs along the Bay of Bengal from the Odisha border in the north to the Nellore–Tamil Nadu boundary in the south, and it contains the state's major deltas (Godavari and Krishna), its principal port cities (Visakhapatnam, Kakinada, Machilipatnam) and the new capital region around Amaravati (in NTR/Guntur district territory). It comprises 18 of the 26 districts: Srikakulam, Parvathipuram Manyam, Vizianagaram, Visakhapatnam, Anakapalli, Alluri Sitharama Raju, Kakinada, East Godavari, Konaseema, West Godavari, Eluru, Krishna, NTR, Guntur, Bapatla, Palnadu, Prakasam and SPS Nellore.

Rayalaseema is the semi-arid, plateau interior in the south-west of the state, historically drought-prone and dependent on tank and reservoir irrigation rather than deltaic canal systems. It comprises 8 districts: Kurnool, Nandyal, Anantapur, Sri Sathya Sai, YSR (Kadapa), Annamayya, Chittoor and Tirupati. Rayalaseema districts border Karnataka to the west and Tamil Nadu to the south, and several — Anantapur and Sri Sathya Sai in particular — are among the driest districts in peninsular India.

Boundary and Neighbour Facts Worth Memorising

• Andhra Pradesh's neighbouring states are Odisha (north-east), Chhattisgarh (a short stretch, north), Telangana (north-west and west), Karnataka (west) and Tamil Nadu (south). Every one of these inter-state boundaries touches at least one of the 26 districts.
• Srikakulam is the northernmost coastal district and the only district sharing a boundary with Odisha along the coast.
• Parvathipuram Manyam and Alluri Sitharama Raju, both carved substantially out of hill/tribal tracts, share boundaries with Odisha's interior districts and are part of the Eastern Ghats agency belt with high Scheduled Tribe population share.
• Anantapur, Sri Sathya Sai and Kurnool border Karnataka.
• Chittoor and Tirupati border Tamil Nadu, and Chittoor additionally has a long shared boundary with Karnataka on its western edge.
• NTR district (headquartered at Vijayawada) and Guntur district are the two districts through which the Krishna river and the new capital region of Amaravati are most closely associated.

Why Some District Names Look Unfamiliar

Several of the new districts are named after major rivers, geographic features, freedom fighters or social reformers rather than their headquarters town, which can trip up aspirants who try to guess headquarters from the district name alone. NTR district is named for former Chief Minister N.T. Rama Rao but its headquarters is Vijayawada, not a town called NTR. Alluri Sitharama Raju district is named for the tribal freedom fighter of the Rampa Rebellion and covers the Eastern Ghats agency tract rather than any single town bearing his name. Konaseema district carries the traditional geographic name for the fertile Godavari-delta river-island tract even though its formal long name references Dr. B.R. Ambedkar. Sri Sathya Sai district is named after the spiritual figure associated with Puttaparthi, which is also its headquarters town. Annamayya district is named for the 15th-century Telugu composer-saint Annamacharya, and its headquarters is Rayachoti.

Sub-Regional Profiles: A Closer Look

Beyond the simple Coastal Andhra / Rayalaseema split, it helps an aspirant to think of the state in five workable sub-blocks, because question papers frequently test which district belongs to which cluster and what distinguishes that cluster economically or geographically.

North Coastal Andhra (Srikakulam, Parvathipuram Manyam, Vizianagaram, Visakhapatnam, Anakapalli, Alluri Sitharama Raju)

This cluster runs from the Odisha border down to the Visakhapatnam metropolitan belt. It combines a narrow, fertile coastal strip growing paddy, cashew and coconut with an extensive hilly agency tract in the Eastern Ghats that is home to a large Scheduled Tribe population practising podu (shifting) cultivation alongside settled farming in the valleys. Visakhapatnam itself anchors the cluster as the state's largest city, its premier port, and a hub for steel, petrochemicals and information technology. Anakapalli, split off from Visakhapatnam district, is known for sugarcane and jaggery production and for the Buddhist heritage site of Thotlakonda nearby. Alluri Sitharama Raju district, almost entirely hilly and forested, contains Araku Valley, a well-known coffee-growing and tourist destination, along with the Borra Caves.

The Godavari Belt (Kakinada, East Godavari, Konaseema, West Godavari, Eluru)

This is the heart of the Godavari river delta, fed by the Dowleswaram (Sir Arthur Cotton) barrage, and is often called the rice bowl of Andhra Pradesh because of its dense network of delta canals supporting intensive paddy cultivation, along with coconut, banana, and aquaculture (shrimp and fish farming) in the tidal reaches close to the coast. Kakinada is a significant port and petrochemical hub. Konaseema, criss-crossed by distributary channels of the Godavari, is famous for coconut groves and for the temple town of Ramachandrapuram and the pilgrimage centre of Antarvedi. Eluru, positioned between the Godavari and Krishna systems, is known for its lake (Kolleru, a major Ramsar wetland site straddles Eluru and Krishna districts) and for chilli and rice-milling trade.

Krishna–Guntur Belt (Krishna, NTR, Guntur, Bapatla, Palnadu)

Centred on the Krishna river delta and the Prakasam Barrage at Vijayawada, this belt is agriculturally similar to the Godavari belt — heavy paddy cultivation — but is also the political and administrative nerve-centre of present-day Andhra Pradesh, since NTR district's headquarters, Vijayawada, sits immediately across the river from Amaravati, the planned capital located mainly in Guntur district territory. Guntur city is a major commercial hub for cotton and, more famously, chillies, with the Guntur chilli yard being one of Asia's largest chilli trading markets. Palnadu district, drier and more upland than the delta districts proper, is historically associated with cotton, tobacco and the Nagarjuna Sagar reservoir's command area.

South Coastal Andhra (Prakasam, SPS Nellore)

South of the Krishna delta, rainfall and canal irrigation both taper off, and agriculture becomes more mixed — paddy along river and canal commands, but also significant dryland cropping, tobacco (Prakasam is a leading Virginia tobacco-growing district) and, in Nellore, aquaculture and mineral resources including mica and barytes. Nellore town sits on the Penna river and is well known for its role in the Green Revolution-era rice economy of the state.

Rayalaseema (Kurnool, Nandyal, Anantapur, Sri Sathya Sai, YSR Kadapa, Annamayya, Chittoor, Tirupati)

Rayalaseema is drier and more drought-prone than any coastal cluster, dependent on tank irrigation, groundwater and a handful of large reservoirs (Srisailam and Tungabhadra among them) rather than delta canals. Its economy leans toward groundnut cultivation (especially in Anantapur, one of India's largest groundnut-growing districts), cotton, sunflower and, increasingly, horticulture. Kurnool was briefly the capital of Andhra State (1953-56) before Hyderabad's merger. Tirupati, home to the Tirumala Venkateswara temple, is one of the most visited pilgrimage centres in the world and gives the wider region much of its religious-tourism economy. YSR Kadapa district is associated with barytes and asbestos mineral deposits, while Chittoor is known for mango, tomato and sericulture.

Administrative Layers Below the District

Below the district level, Andhra Pradesh's revenue and police administration is organised into revenue divisions (each headed by a Revenue Divisional Officer / Sub-Collector), which are in turn divided into mandals (the basic revenue unit, replacing the older taluk terminology), and mandals into revenue villages. On the policing side, each district is headed by a Superintendent of Police (an Sp of Police Commissionerate in cities like Visakhapatnam and Vijayawada that have metropolitan police commissionerates), with sub-divisions typically mirroring revenue divisions and further broken into police circles and police stations. Aspirants should note that a police district does not always map one-to-one onto a revenue district — some large cities have a separate Police Commissionerate carved out of the surrounding revenue district for operational reasons, Visakhapatnam City and Vijayawada being the clearest examples.

Common Exam Traps and How to Avoid Them

District questions are popular precisely because they are easy to set and easy to get subtly wrong, so it is worth flagging the traps that repeatedly show up in AP SI and Constable papers.

• Confusing the district with its headquarters town. NTR district's headquarters is Vijayawada, not a place called NTR; Sri Sathya Sai district's headquarters is Puttaparthi, not a town called Sathya Sai. Always separate the administrative name from the seat of administration.
• Assuming the new district's boundary equals the old undivided district's boundary. "Guntur district" today is territorially smaller than "Guntur district" as it existed before 2022, because Bapatla and Palnadu were carved out of it. A fact that was true of undivided Guntur (for instance, a particular town or landmark) may now sit administratively in Bapatla or Palnadu.
• Mixing up Eluru and West Godavari. These sound like they could be the same district under a new and old name, but they are two distinct, separately headquartered districts formed from the erstwhile West Godavari district (with Eluru also drawing a portion from Krishna district).
• Forgetting that Konaseema and Ambedkar Konaseema are the same district. The district's official long-form name is Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Konaseema, but it is very commonly referred to simply as Konaseema district in question papers and government usage alike.
• Treating Rayalaseema as fixed at four districts. Under the old 13-district system, Rayalaseema had exactly four districts (Kurnool, Anantapur, YSR Kadapa, Chittoor). Under the new system it has eight. A question that says "how many districts in Rayalaseema" without specifying pre- or post-2022 is testing whether you know both numbers.
• Overlooking that district reorganisation did not touch the state boundary. Andhra Pradesh's total area and its boundaries with Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Telangana, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu are unchanged by the 2022 Act; only internal administrative lines moved.

Historical Background: How the District Map Evolved

Understanding the 2022 change is easier against the backdrop of two earlier reorganisations. Independent India's District map of the Madras Presidency's Andhra-speaking districts, along with the princely-era Hyderabad State's Telangana and the separate Rayalaseema districts, were first brought together as Andhra State in 1953 (itself created out of Madras State in 1953, with Kurnool as its temporary capital) and then merged with Telangana in 1956 to form the undivided Andhra Pradesh, with Hyderabad as the joint capital. That undivided state functioned with a broadly stable set of coastal, Rayalaseema and Telangana districts for nearly six decades. The next major rupture came in June 2014, when Telangana was separated into its own state under the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act, 2014, leaving residual Andhra Pradesh with the 13 Coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema districts described earlier in this chapter, and without a ready-made capital city, since Hyderabad went to Telangana. The 2022 exercise is therefore best understood as the second major administrative restructuring the state has undergone in less than a decade, distinct in character from 2014 because it redrew only internal district lines and did not alter the state's external boundary or its status as a single state.

Key Facts at a Glance

• Andhra Pradesh had 13 districts from the post-1956 reorganisation until 3 April 2022.
• The Andhra Pradesh Districts (Formation) Act, 2022 created 26 districts, effective 4 April 2022 — an exact doubling.
• Of the 26 districts, 18 lie in Coastal Andhra and 8 lie in Rayalaseema, preserving the earlier 9:4 ratio.
• Every one of the 13 pre-2022 districts was subdivided; several new districts kept a legacy name (East Godavari, West Godavari, Krishna, Guntur, Prakasam, Kurnool, Anantapur, Chittoor) but with reduced territory.
• NTR district (headquarters Vijayawada) was carved from the erstwhile Krishna district and is named after former CM N.T. Rama Rao.
• Alluri Sitharama Raju district (headquarters Paderu) is the principal Eastern Ghats tribal-agency district, named for the freedom fighter of the Rampa Rebellion.
• Andhra Pradesh borders five states/regions: Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Telangana, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.
• The Godavari delta districts (East Godavari, Kakinada, Konaseema) and the Krishna delta districts (Krishna, NTR, Guntur) together form the historic "granary of Andhra Pradesh."
• Sri Sathya Sai and Anantapur, both in Rayalaseema, are among the driest districts in the state.

Districts, Police Ranges and Zones

For SI and Constable aspirants specifically, it is worth knowing that AP Police organises its territorial commands into ranges and zones that group several districts under an Inspector General or Deputy Inspector General of Police, sitting above the district Superintendent of Police in the command hierarchy. Broadly, the northern coastal districts (from Srikakulam down through Visakhapatnam and its neighbours) fall under a Visakhapatnam-anchored range/zone structure; the Godavari-Krishna-Guntur coastal belt falls under range structures anchored around Rajamahendravaram/Vijayawada/Guntur; the southern coastal districts and Rayalaseema fall under range structures anchored around Nellore, Kurnool and Chittoor/Tirupati. The precise range boundaries and the specific IG/DIG headquarters are periodically revised by government order to keep pace with the district reorganisation, so aspirants should treat the general principle — that ranges are multi-district groupings supervising SPs, distinct from the district itself — as the stable, testable fact, rather than memorising a range map that may be revised again. Two cities, Visakhapatnam and Vijayawada, additionally have their own Police Commissionerates headed by a Commissioner of Police who exercises magisterial powers in addition to normal policing powers within city limits, a structure distinct from the district SP model used everywhere else in the state; candidates should not assume every large town has a Commissionerate, since most district headquarters, including large ones like Guntur and Kurnool, continue to be policed under the ordinary SP-led district structure.

Practice MCQs

1. The Andhra Pradesh district reorganisation that created 26 districts took effect on which date?
   (a) 2 June 2014 (b) 4 April 2022 (c) 1 November 1956 (d) 15 August 2022
   Answer: (b) — The Andhra Pradesh Districts (Formation) Act, 2022 took effect on 4 April 2022.
2. How many districts did Andhra Pradesh have immediately before the 2022 reorganisation?
   (a) 9 (b) 13 (c) 23 (d) 26
   Answer: (b) — Andhra Pradesh had 13 districts before April 2022.
3. How many of the 26 districts fall within the Rayalaseema region?
   (a) 4 (b) 6 (c) 8 (d) 10
   Answer: (c) — Eight districts (Kurnool, Nandyal, Anantapur, Sri Sathya Sai, YSR Kadapa, Annamayya, Chittoor, Tirupati) form Rayalaseema.
4. The headquarters of NTR district is:
   (a) Guntur (b) Vijayawada (c) Machilipatnam (d) Eluru
   Answer: (b) — NTR district, carved from the old Krishna district, has its headquarters at Vijayawada.
5. Which district was created mainly to serve the Eastern Ghats tribal/agency tract and is named after a freedom fighter of the Rampa Rebellion?
   (a) Parvathipuram Manyam (b) Alluri Sitharama Raju (c) Anakapalli (d) Konaseema
   Answer: (b) — Alluri Sitharama Raju district, headquartered at Paderu, is named for the tribal freedom fighter.
6. The headquarters of the new West Godavari district (post-2022) is:
   (a) Eluru (b) Bhimavaram (c) Tanuku (d) Narsapuram
   Answer: (b) — West Godavari district's headquarters is Bhimavaram; Eluru became a separate new district.
7. Which of the following is a district formed largely from the Godavari delta river-island tract and carries a traditional geographic name?
   (a) Kakinada (b) Konaseema (c) Eluru (d) Bapatla
   Answer: (b) — Konaseema district covers the fertile Godavari delta islands.
8. Annamayya district, headquartered at Rayachoti, is named after:
   (a) A former Chief Minister (b) The Telugu composer-saint Annamacharya (c) A river (d) A freedom fighter
   Answer: (b) — Annamayya district honours the 15th-century Telugu vaggeyakara Annamacharya.
9. Which of these states does Andhra Pradesh NOT share a boundary with?
   (a) Odisha (b) Karnataka (c) Kerala (d) Tamil Nadu
   Answer: (c) — Andhra Pradesh borders Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Telangana, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, not Kerala.
10. Sri Sathya Sai district, headquartered at Puttaparthi, was carved out of which old district?
    (a) Kurnool (b) Anantapur (c) Chittoor (d) YSR Kadapa
    Answer: (b) — Sri Sathya Sai district was formed from the old Anantapur district.
11. The total number of districts in Andhra Pradesh after the 2022 reorganisation is:
    (a) 23 (b) 25 (c) 26 (d) 28
    Answer: (c) — Andhra Pradesh now has 26 districts.
12. Which district is named after a former Chief Minister but headquartered in a city with a different name?
    (a) Bapatla (b) NTR (c) Palnadu (d) Nandyal
    Answer: (b) — NTR district is named for N.T. Rama Rao but headquartered at Vijayawada.
13. Tirupati district was carved mainly from which old district(s)?
    (a) Kurnool only (b) Anantapur only (c) Chittoor and parts of Nellore (d) Guntur only
    Answer: (c) — Tirupati district draws largely from the old Chittoor district along with some coastal Nellore taluks.
14. Coastal Andhra, as reorganised in 2022, comprises how many districts?
    (a) 14 (b) 16 (c) 18 (d) 20
    Answer: (c) — Eighteen of the 26 districts lie within Coastal Andhra.
15. Which district's headquarters is Narasaraopet?
    (a) Bapatla (b) Palnadu (c) Guntur (d) Prakasam
    Answer: (b) — Palnadu district, carved from Guntur, has its headquarters at Narasaraopet.