This article looks at the growth and expansion of Delhi during the eventful period 1936–59. It examines how the sovereign state came to acquire vast new legal powers to regulate the city, the economy and the polity through the course of managing World War II, the Transfer of Power and finally Partition. In the case of urban planning, the process of increasing state control over land, urban development and the built environment started specifically in 1937 with the establishment of the Delhi Improvement Trust and culminated with the formation of the Delhi Development Authority in 1957. At the same time the article also shows that despite this, Delhi's actual growth in this period often sidestepped state plans with the city's urban expansion being moulded by the impact of global events; emerging through the everyday actions of a vastly increased urban citizenry, especially following Partition, and also by the unexpected playing-out of increasing and exaggerated institutionalised state power itself, as described in the article.