The States that first implemented the Panchayati Raj in 1959 were:

The Balwant Rai Mehta Committee (1957), endorsed by the National Development Council in 1958, recommended a three-tier Panchayati Raj system — Gram Panchayat, Panchayat Samiti, and Zilla Parishad — to devolve planning and development powers to democratically elected local bodies. This was the foundational blueprint for rural local self-government in independent India.

Rajasthan became the first state to put this recommendation into practice, inaugurating its Panchayati Raj system in Nagaur district on 2 October 1959. Andhra Pradesh followed within a month, launching its own system on 1 November 1959. So the pair of states that pioneered Panchayati Raj in 1959 is Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh.

• Karnataka's own well-known Panchayati Raj reform took shape only in the 1980s (the Ramakrishna Hegde-era Zilla Parishad framework) — decades after 1959, ruling out that pairing.

• Gujarat did not even exist as a separate state in 1959; it was carved out of Bombay State only in May 1960, so it could not have run a 1959 scheme — ruling out that pairing.

• Tamil Nadu (then Madras State) followed a separate, later track for its Panchayati Raj overhaul, not the 1959 rollout — ruling out that pairing.

This item-derived timeline, cross-checked against each distractor's actual history, confirms Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh as the two 1959 pioneer states.