District Magistrate / Collector
Kamal Ram Meena
Know Your District
Beawar
Dixon's planned town, RTI's cradle, Rajasthan's cement-limestone heartland.
Last verified: 2026-05-06
Beawar is a planned colonial-era town in central Rajasthan that became the state's fiftieth district on 7 August 2023, carved out of Ajmer along with slices of Pali, Rajsamand and Bhilwara. Founded in 1836 by Colonel Charles George Dixon as the headquarters of the Mer-Merwara cantonment, it grew into a nineteenth-century cotton entrepot and the cradle of Rajasthan's Right to Information movement. Today the district headquarters in Ajmer division anchors a corridor of cement, limestone, feldspar and marble industries strung along NH-58 and NH-158.
District at a Glance
| Geographical area | 4,425 sq km |
|---|---|
| Population (Census 2011, 2023 boundaries) | About 10.95 lakh (reconstructed from 2011 sub-district data within 2023 district boundaries) |
| Sex ratio (Census 2011, 2023 boundaries) | About 977 females per 1000 males |
| Headquarters | Beawar |
| Created | 2023 (carved from Ajmer, Pali, Bhilwara and Rajsamand on 7 August 2023) |
District Administration
Current officeholders — sourced from public records.
Superintendent of Police
Ratan Singh
Additional District Magistrate / Additional Collector
Brahma Lal Jat
District & Sessions Judge
Harun
Member of Parliament, Lok Sabha
Bhagirath Choudhary
Ajmer
Bharatiya Janata PartySince 2024
Member of Parliament, Lok Sabha
Mahima Kumari Mewar
Rajsamand
Bharatiya Janata PartySince 2024
Member of Legislative Assembly
Shankar Singh Rawat
Beawar Assembly constituency
Bharatiya Janata PartySince 2023
Member of Legislative Assembly
Virendra Singh
Masuda Assembly constituency
Bharatiya Janata PartySince 2023
Member of Legislative Assembly
Avinash Gehlot
Jaitaran
Bharatiya Janata PartySince 2023
History — Ancient → Medieval → Modern
Dixon's Foundation 1836
Beawar was founded on 1 February 1836 by Colonel Charles George Dixon, Superintendent of Mer-Merwara, who laid out the town on wasteland adjoining the older village of Beawar Khas to serve as the administrative and cantonment headquarters of the Mer-Merwara tract under British India.
Tri-Junction Cantonment
The site was chosen because Beawar lay at the strategic tri-junction of the princely states of Jaipur, Jodhpur and Udaipur, allowing the British to control the unruly Magra-Merwara highlands and the cotton-trade route between Marwar and Malwa from a single garrison.
Mer-Merwara Battalion
To pacify the Kathat and Rawat clans of the surrounding hills the British raised the Mer-Merwara Battalion in 1822, recruiting from these very communities and designating them a martial race; the unit was permanently headquartered at Beawar after Dixon laid the town and served the Crown into the twentieth century.
Krishna Mills 1889
Krishna Mills, set up at Beawar in 1889 by Seth Damodar Das Rathi, was the first power-loom cotton textile mill of Rajputana, marking the start of organised industry in the region and turning the town into a major cotton mandi for traders from Marwar, Malwa and Gujarat.
Merger With Rajasthan
After India's independence the Mer-Merwara tract was merged with Ajmer-Merwara state in 1949 and finally absorbed into Rajasthan on 1 November 1956 under the States Reorganisation Act, when Beawar became a tehsil of the newly formed Ajmer district.
RTI Dharna 1996
On 6 April 1996 the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan led by Aruna Roy, Nikhil Dey and Shankar Singh launched a forty-day public dharna in Beawar's Chang Gate, the first mass agitation in India to demand a statutory Right to Information, a struggle that culminated in the national RTI Act of 2005.
District Notification 2023
Beawar was notified as Rajasthan's fiftieth district on 7 August 2023 under Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, drawing tehsils from four parent districts — Beawar, Todgarh, Jaitaran, Raipur, Masuda, Vijaynagar and Badnor — to give the Marwar-Mewar borderland its own headquarters after 187 years of municipal existence.
Art, Culture, Heritage & Tourism
Badshah Mela
The Badshah Mela, held the day after Holi since 1851, recreates the legend of Akbar gifting two-and-a-half days of mock kingship to the merchant Todarmal Agrawal, who saved his life from dacoits; a costumed Badshah and his Birbal lead a city procession showering red gulal, with no water used at any stage.
Devmali Best Village
Devmali village in Masuda tehsil, devoted to the deity Devnarayan, was declared India's Best Tourist Village by the Union Ministry of Tourism in 2023, recognised for its near-zero crime rate, communal harmony and a tradition of building only thatch-and-mud houses without locks.
Devnarayan Pad
The Devnarayan Pad, a forty-five-hour sung epic narrating the life of the Gurjar warrior-saint born to Sawai Bhoj at nearby Asind, is performed by bhopa singers using a painted scroll called the par; it is one of the longest oral epics in the world and was inscribed in UNESCO's Memory of the World register research lists.
Todgarh Hill Heritage
Todgarh tehsil, set deep in the Aravalli, hosts the Pragya Shikhar temple of Acharya Tulsi built entirely in black granite by the Terapanth Jain community in 2005, alongside colonial-era stone bungalows that recall the British hill-station of Borawar above the Mer plateau.
Walled-City Gates
Beawar's Chang Gate, Mewari Gate and Ajmeri Gate frame a walled old city laid out by Dixon on a grid of straight bazaars, an unusual European town-planning specimen in Rajputana that survives along with the 1840s clock-tower square called Sarafa Bazaar at the city's heart.
Geography, Climate & Ecology
Aravalli Plateau Town
Beawar district sits at roughly 26.10° N, 74.32° E in the central Aravalli belt, with the headquarters town at an elevation of about 439 metres on a saddle between the Mer hills, making it one of the cooler urban centres of central Rajasthan.
Khari River Watershed
The district straddles the watershed of the Aravalli, with the seasonal Khari river — a tributary of the Banas — rising in the Beawar uplands and feeding the Narayan Sagar and Khari dams downstream that irrigate eastern Beawar and Bhilwara.
Todgarh-Raoli Sanctuary
Todgarh-Raoli Wildlife Sanctuary in the southern part of the district covers about 495 square kilometres of dry-deciduous Aravalli forest and shelters leopard, sloth bear, four-horned antelope and the rare Indian wolf, forming the largest contiguous green cover in the new district.
Banas-Luni Divide
The Beawar uplands form the divide between the Bay-of-Bengal-bound Banas system to the east and the Arabian-Sea-bound Luni system to the west, a hydrological feature that places the district at one of Rajasthan's two principal continental water-partings.
Area And Climate
The 2011 census of the constituent tehsils that now form Beawar district records a population of about 11.94 lakh and an area of about 4,425 square kilometres, with average annual rainfall of around 50 सेंटीमीटर concentrated in the south-west monsoon and a semi-arid BSh climate.
Economy — Sectors, Industry, Energy
Shree Cement Headquarters
Beawar is the headquarters of Shree Cement Limited, incorporated in 1979 by the Bangur family with its first 0.6 MTPA integrated plant commissioned at Bangur Nagar in 1985; the company's registered office at Beawar today anchors a group capacity of about 66.8 million tonnes per annum (MTPA) — across India and the UAE.
Limestone Mineral Belt
The district lies on Rajasthan's principal cement-grade limestone belt, with reserves stretching from Pali into Beawar's Jaitaran and Raipur tehsils; Indian Bureau of Mines data place Rajasthan among the top three states for limestone, feldspar and quartz production, with Beawar's mines feeding plants of Shree Cement, Wonder Cement and Birla Corporation.
Mandi And Mills
Beawar town is among Rajasthan's busiest grain and oilseed mandis: the local Krishi Upaj Mandi handles mustard, gram and barley from Marwar and Mewar, and Krishna Mills established here in 1889 was Rajputana's first cotton textile mill, anchoring a long tradition of agro-industrial trade.
NH-58 Four-Laning
The four-laning of the Ajmer-Beawar stretch of NH-58 under Bharatmala Pariyojana, covering about 92 किलोमीटर, was nearing completion in 2025 and integrates Beawar's industrial estates into the Delhi-Mumbai logistics spine via the parallel Delhi-Mumbai Expressway, sharply cutting freight costs for cement clinker.
Political & Administrative Setup
District Administration
Beawar district falls in the Ajmer revenue division and is administered by a District Collector with seven tehsils — Beawar, Todgarh, Jaitaran, Raipur, Masuda, Vijaynagar and Badnor — drawn from Ajmer, Pali, Rajsamand and Bhilwara at the time of its creation in August 2023.
Vidhan Sabha 2023
Beawar Vidhan Sabha (constituency number 103) is part of the Rajsamand Lok Sabha seat; in the 2023 Rajasthan Assembly election Shankar Singh Rawat of the BJP won the seat by 8,878 votes against Paras Panch Jain of the INC, polling about 67,623 votes on a turnout of 69.82 per cent.
Nagar Parishad Beawar
Beawar municipality, upgraded to a Nagar Parishad (council), is one of Rajasthan's oldest civic bodies — the British Mer-Merwara administration set up a town committee here in the 1840s, and the present council manages 60 wards across the rapidly urbanising district headquarters.
Governance Initiatives & Schemes (2025-26)
RTI Act 2005
The Right to Information Act 2005, whose first public dharna was held in Beawar in 1996, today empowers any Indian citizen to seek information from public authorities within 30 days; the Rajasthan State Information Commission disposes of thousands of second appeals each year and Beawar district offices fall under its mandatory disclosure regime.
Best Tourist Village
Devmali village in Masuda tehsil, awarded India's Best Tourist Village 2023 by the Union Ministry of Tourism, is being upgraded under the Swadesh Darshan 2.0 scheme with rural homestays, eco-trails and Devnarayan-themed interpretation centres to channel pilgrim and heritage tourism revenue to villagers.
Bharatmala NH-58
The Bharatmala Pariyojana corridor along NH-58 between Ajmer and Beawar — a four-lane greenfield section of about 92 किलोमीटर — was sanctioned by the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways and is being executed by NHAI to integrate the cement and limestone hubs of central Rajasthan with the Delhi-Mumbai Expressway feeders.
PYQ One-Liners (RAS / RPSC / RSSB)
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PYQ one-liners for Beawar are coming soon.
Test yourself — 10 questions
A quick self-check drawn from the district reference above. Bilingual, no login required.
Question 1 of 8
Beawar was notified as Rajasthan's fiftieth district on which date?
Frequently asked questions
When was Beawar declared a separate district of Rajasthan?
Beawar was notified as Rajasthan's fiftieth district on 7 August 2023 under the state cabinet's reorganisation that added 19 new districts; it was carved primarily out of Ajmer with portions of Pali, Rajsamand and Bhilwara, and the headquarters was placed at Beawar town.
Why is Beawar called the birthplace of India's RTI movement?
On 6 April 1996 the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan led by Aruna Roy, Nikhil Dey and Shankar Singh launched a forty-day public dharna at Chang Gate in Beawar demanding a statutory right to inspect government records; this was India's first mass agitation for transparency and led to Rajasthan's RTI Act of 2000 and the national RTI Act of 2005.
Which major industries operate in Beawar district today?
Beawar is the registered headquarters of Shree Cement Ltd, sits on Rajasthan's principal cement-grade limestone and feldspar belt, and hosts long-running cotton, mineral-grinding and concrete-pipe industries dating back to Krishna Mills of 1889; the NH-58 Ajmer-Beawar four-lane corridor connects these clusters to the Delhi-Mumbai logistics spine.
What is the Badshah Mela of Beawar?
The Badshah Mela, observed since 1851 the day after Holi, is a unique procession in which a costumed Badshah and his Birbal traverse Beawar's old city showering only red gulal, never water; it commemorates Mughal emperor Akbar's legendary gift of two-and-a-half days of mock kingship to the merchant Todarmal Agrawal.