Assam Produced Half of India's Tea in 2024 and Is Home to 2,885 of India's 3,266 One-Horned Rhinos, in a State Whose Borders Were Last Changed in 2015

Assam produced 649.84 million kg of tea in 2024, which is 50.6 percent of India’s 1,284.78 million kg by tuput’s arithmetic, according to the Tea Board’s provisional state-wise table. The same state holds most of India’s greater one-horned rhinoceroses: a count in March and April 2022 recorded 2,885 in Assam, against 3,266 in the whole country, the Asian Rhino Specialist Group’s chair reports in the journal Pachyderm. The census figures below are from 2011, the latest published, because the next census is under way.

From one province to several states, in stages

At the commencement of the Constitution, the First Schedule defined Assam as the territories of the Province of Assam, the Khasi States and the Assam Tribal Areas. The same entry, as amended, now lists what has been taken out of it, starting with territories given up under the Assam (Alteration of Boundaries) Act, 1951.

The State of Nagaland Act, 1962 took effect on 1 December 1963. The Assam Reorganisation (Meghalaya) Act, 1969 then created an autonomous State of Meghalaya inside Assam from 2 April 1970. Article 244A, inserted by the Twenty-second Amendment with effect from 25 September 1969, lets Parliament form an autonomous state within Assam out of the tribal areas in Part I of the Sixth Schedule’s table, with its own legislature, council of ministers or both.

The North-Eastern Areas (Reorganisation) Act, 1971, dated 30 December 1971, finished the work on 21 January 1972. It formed the full State of Meghalaya, the Union territory of Mizoram from the Mizo District, and the Union territory of Arunachal Pradesh from the tribal areas known as the North-East Frontier Agency. On the same day it cut the Assam Assembly from 126 seats to 114. The latest change is the Constitution (One Hundredth Amendment) Act, 2015, which gave effect to the 1974 India-Bangladesh land boundary agreement and its 2011 protocol, with 31 July 2015 as the appointed day.

One house, 126 seats and a 35-district map

Article 168 names the states with two houses and says that in other states there is one. Assam is not named, so its Legislature is the Governor and a Legislative Assembly alone. The Fourth Schedule gives the state 7 Rajya Sabha seats.

The Election Commission’s final delimitation order, published on 11 August 2023, kept the totals at 126 Assembly seats and 14 Lok Sabha seats. It reserved 9 Assembly seats for Scheduled Castes and 19 for Scheduled Tribes, up from 8 and 16, and in the Lok Sabha it reserved one seat for Scheduled Castes and two, Diphu and Kokrajhar, for Scheduled Tribes. Assembly seats in the Bodoland districts rose from 11 to 15, and one Lok Sabha seat was named Kaziranga. The Commission worked from the 2001 census, which Article 170 fixes as the reference until figures from the first census after 2026 are published.

The order drew objections. Sabrang India reports that the All India United Democratic Front said it would cut Muslim-majority Assembly seats from 29 to 22, and that petitioners questioned the use of 2001 data. The Commission said it considered all representations and adopted about 45 percent of 1,222 suggestions.

The state’s Directorate of Economics and Statistics counts 35 districts. The state has also set up co-districts, administrative units that PTI says handle land revenue, magisterial functions, food and civil supplies, panchayat and rural development and disaster management. It reports that 39 were inaugurated in October 2024 and 10 more in August 2025, for 49, and that the Chief Minister’s Office says the aim is to bring services closer to people.

The Gauhati High Court serves Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram and Nagaland. Meghalaya, Manipur and Tripura received their own High Courts when a 2012 amendment to the 1971 Act took effect on 23 March 2013. A presidential order of 18 July 2000 set up a permanent bench at Itanagar and lets the Chief Justice direct that any Arunachal case be heard at Guwahati. Under section 3 of the Assam Official Language Act, 1960 (Act 33 of 1960), Assamese is used for the state’s official purposes, with English alongside it in the Secretariat. Section 5 keeps Bengali in official use in Cachar district, as the Laval University language-policy archive sets out. The Eighth Schedule lists Assamese, Bengali and Bodo, the last added with effect from 7 January 2004. The capital is Dispur.

At the 2011 census Assam had 3,12,05,576 people on 78,438 square kilometres, which the Directorate puts at 2.6 percent of India’s population and 2.4 percent of its land. Literacy was 72.19 percent and density 398 per square kilometre.

Three councils and two articles of the Constitution written for Assam

Part I of the table to the Sixth Schedule lists three tribal areas in Assam: the North Cachar Hills District, the Karbi Anglong District and the Bodoland Territorial Areas District. Each has a district council. The Constitution names them the North Cachar Hills Autonomous Council, the Karbi Anglong Autonomous Council (both by an amendment of 1995) and the Bodoland Territorial Council (by an amendment in force from 7 September 2003). Paragraph 3A, added in 1995, lets the first two make laws in their districts on subjects such as industries and communications. The Fifth and Sixth Schedules guide explains how the councils work.

Article 371B, in force from 25 September 1969, lets the President provide by order for a committee of the Legislative Assembly made up of members elected from those tribal areas, plus other members the order names. It is one of the provisions in the guide to Articles 371 to 371J.

Half of India’s tea in an economy of Rs 7.45 lakh crore

The Tea Board’s table puts Assam’s 2024 crop at 649.84 million kg, of which big growers made 338.57 million and small growers 311.27 million. The Assam Valley supplied 610.52 million kg and Cachar 39.32 million. In 2023 the figures were 688.33 million kg of India’s 1,393.66 million, or 49.4 percent. The Board marks its figures from April 2024 onward as provisional.

PRS Legislative Research, working from the state’s budget documents, puts gross state domestic product (GSDP, the value of goods and services produced in a year) at Rs 6,43,383 crore in 2024-25 and Rs 7,45,292 crore in the 2025-26 revised estimate. A lakh crore is a trillion rupees. Real growth in 2025-26 is estimated at about 10 percent, against 8 percent for India. Agriculture, manufacturing and services supply 35, 22 and 43 percent of the economy. Per capita GSDP is Rs 2,03,760 against India’s Rs 2,43,803, about 84 percent by tuput’s arithmetic.

The budget presented on 10 July 2026 draws Rs 42,449 crore, or 36 percent of revenue receipts, from the state’s own resources and Rs 76,113 crore, or 64 percent, from central transfers. PRS puts the 2025-26 revised fiscal deficit at 6.7 percent of GSDP against 3.7 percent budgeted, and the 2026-27 target at 3.0 percent. The budget adds a subsidy of Rs 3 a kg for export-oriented and premium Assam tea.

What only Assam can say

Kaziranga National Park recorded 2,613 rhinos in the 2022 count, Orang 125, Pabitora 107 and Manas 40, according to Pachyderm. India and Nepal together held 4,018 wild greater one-horned rhinos, and two were poached in India between July 2021 and September 2022.

The Moidams, the mound-burial system of the Ahom dynasty, were inscribed on the World Heritage List on 26 July 2024 at the 46th session in New Delhi, as the 43rd Indian site, the United Nations in India reports. Majuli, an island in the Brahmaputra, became a district in 2016 and the district’s page calls it the first island district in India. It now covers 483 square kilometres against 1,250 before 1950, and our Majuli guide covers the erosion. The Press Information Bureau describes Lachit Barphukan (24 November 1622 to 25 April 1672) as the general of the Ahom royal army who inspired the Assamese soldiers at the Battle of Saraighat in 1671, where the Mughals were defeated, and our account of Lachit Borphukan follows the sources.

The register and the clause

Section 6A of the Citizenship Act, in force from 7 December 1985, deems persons of Indian origin who came to Assam from the territory now in Bangladesh before 1 January 1966 to be citizens from that date. Those who came on or after that date and before 25 March 1971 register after a Foreigners Tribunal detects them as foreigners, and become citizens ten years after detection. The piece on Indian citizenship places the clause among the other routes.

The Home Ministry’s Annual Report for 2019-20 describes the Supreme Court-directed update of the National Register of Citizens as listing people in the 1951 register or in electoral rolls up to midnight on 24 March 1971, and their descendants. It records 2,89,83,677 people eligible in the draft of 30 July 2018, claims for 36,26,630 people and objections against 1,87,633. The lists published on 31 August 2019 found 3,11,21,004 people eligible for the final register and left out 19,06,657. Anyone dissatisfied with a decision on a claim or objection may appeal to a Foreigners Tribunal within 120 days.

On 17 October 2024 a five-judge Supreme Court bench upheld section 6A. The Court’s record of proceedings gives the Chief Justice’s conclusion that the 25 March 1971 cut-off is reasonable because Pakistan’s army began Operation Searchlight in East Pakistan on 26 March 1971, and that migration has had a greater effect in Assam than in other border states. Three judges in a second opinion held the section valid but ruled that those who entered on or after 25 March 1971 are not protected by it. One judge wrote a separate judgment ending the benefit of section 6A from the date of the ruling. Between them, the two majority opinions rejected challenges based on Articles 6, 7, 9, 14, 21, 29, 326 and 355.

The Union could not give the Court a precise figure for entries after 1971. It reported about 97,714 cases pending before Foreigners Tribunals and nearly 850 km of border unfenced or inadequately monitored, and the Court asked for a bench to monitor its directions.

What comes next

In Census 2027, house listing runs from 1 April to 30 September 2026, in a 30-day window each state sets, and the population count has a reference date of 00:00 hours on 1 March 2027, the Press Information Bureau says. Until the figures of the first census after 2026 are published, Article 81 reads “population” as the 1971 census when seats in the Lok Sabha are allocated to states, and Article 170 reads it as the 2001 census when a state is divided into Assembly constituencies.

The 2026-27 budget adds four medical colleges, about 33,000 health posts and Rs 72,753 crore for six power projects, PRS reports, and Rs 2,100 crore for land for a satellite city near Guwahati.