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In this article the searching capability of genetic algorithms has been exploited for automatically evolving the number of clusters as well as proper clustering of any data set. A new string representation, comprising both real numbers and the do not care symbol, is used in order to encode a variable number of clusters. The Davies–Bouldin index is used as a measure of the validity of the clusters. Effectiveness of the genetic clustering scheme is demonstrated for both artificial and real-life data sets. Utility of the genetic clustering technique is also demonstrated for a satellite image of a part of the city Calcutta. The proposed technique is able to distinguish some characteristic landcover types in the image.