India is a union of states and union territories as per article 1 of the Indian Constitution. Some states and union territories are further divided into divisions, which are made up of groups of districts. A division is led by an officer of the Indian Administrative Service, known as a divisional commissioner. There are 111 divisions in India.

The states of Andhra Pradesh, Goa, Manipur, Mizoram, Sikkim, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, and Tripura, Kerala as well as five of the union territories are not divided into divisions. Instead, these states and territories go directly from the state to the district level for administrative purposes.

Some states consist of regions, which have no official administrative governmental status. They are purely geographic regions; some correspond to historic countries, states or provinces. A region may comprise one or more divisions, averaging about three divisions per region. However, the boundaries of the regions and the boundaries of the divisions do not always coincide exactly. So far there has been no movement to give the regions official administrative status. If this was to be done, it would presumably require that the boundaries of the regions be slightly modified so that they correspond exactly with their constituent districts.

The states and union territories in India that do not have divisions and thus do not have divisional commissioners are as follows:

In these 12 areas, administrative divisions are not established, and hence the role of a divisional commissioner, who typically oversees revenue administration at the divisional level, does not exist. These nine states and three UTs directly divided into districts and district administration reports to the revenue department of the government.