Chhattisgarh Is India's Only Producer of Tin Concentrate, Holds 18 Percent of Its Coal Resources and Is Estimated to Have Grown 8.1 Percent in 2025-26, in a State Formed on 1 November 2000

Chhattisgarh is the only Indian state that produces tin concentrate, according to the Indian Bureau of Mines, which also puts about 18 percent of the country’s coal resources and 20 percent of its haematite iron ore resources in the state. PRS Legislative Research, working from national accounts data, reports that Chhattisgarh’s economy was estimated to grow 8.1 percent in 2025-26 after adjusting for prices, against 7.4 percent for India. The population figures below come from the 2011 census, the latest published, because the next census is under way.

Sixteen districts of Madhya Pradesh became a state on 1 November 2000

The Madhya Pradesh Reorganisation Act, 2000 (Act 28 of 2000) created the state. Section 3 forms Chhattisgarh from 16 districts of the existing Madhya Pradesh: Bastar, Bilaspur, Dantewada, Dhamtari, Durg, Janjgir-Champa, Jashpur, Kanker, Kawardha, Korba, Koria, Mahasamund, Raigarh, Raipur, Rajnandgaon and Surguja. The Act left the start date to the Centre, which fixed 1 November 2000 by notification S.O. 827(E) of 14 September 2000, according to the footnote to the Act’s text. The Constitution’s First Schedule lists the state from the same date.

The Act settled the handover in a few plain steps. Section 12 fixed 90 Assembly seats for Chhattisgarh and 230 for Madhya Pradesh. Section 13 made every sitting Madhya Pradesh MLA elected from a Chhattisgarh constituency a member of the new Assembly from the appointed day, so the state had a legislature without a fresh election. Section 21 created a separate High Court, with its principal seat to be named by an order of the President. Section 9 gave the Lok Sabha 11 seats for Chhattisgarh and 29 for Madhya Pradesh, and section 7 added Chhattisgarh to the Constitution’s Fourth Schedule with 5 seats in the Rajya Sabha.

The Constitution names the state again in Article 164, which requires Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh and Odisha to have a minister in charge of tribal welfare. The Ninety-fourth Amendment put Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand into that list in place of Bihar from 12 June 2006.

On 1 November 2025, 25 years after the state’s formation, the Prime Minister inaugurated a new Assembly building at Nava Raipur. The Hitavada reported on 18 November 2025 that the Assembly’s special session that day was the last to be held in the old building.

Ninety MLAs, 16 seats in Parliament and 33 districts

The Assembly has a single house, and Chhattisgarh is among the states without a Legislative Council, a point covered in our guide to which states have two houses. The Second Schedule to the Representation of the People Act, 1950 reserves 10 of the 90 seats for Scheduled Castes and 29 for Scheduled Tribes. Of the 11 Lok Sabha seats, 1 is reserved for Scheduled Castes and 4 for Scheduled Tribes, and the state has 5 Rajya Sabha seats, 16 in all. Under Article 170 the Assembly’s seat count stays tied to the 2001 census until figures from the first census after 2026 are published, the freeze explained in our piece on Lok Sabha seats and delimitation.

The state began with the 16 districts in section 3. A tabulation of the 2011 census figures on 2023 boundaries lists 33. The High Court of Chhattisgarh sits at Bilaspur. The Hitavada reported in 2022 that its total strength is 22 judges, and Bar and Bench reported on 18 August 2026 a working strength of 13 against the same 22 sanctioned posts.

On language, Chhattisgarh Act 14 of 2008, dated 11 July 2008, amends the state’s 1957 official language law by inserting “and Chhattisgarhi” after “Hindi”. Its preamble speaks of adopting Chhattisgarhi in addition to Hindi, and it takes effect on a date the state notifies. The Deccan Chronicle reported on 9 September 2026 that the Governor had proposed an expert committee to press the Centre to add Chhattisgarhi, spoken by nearly 1.5 crore people, to the Eighth Schedule, a demand it says has run for about seven decades. Our guide to the 22 languages of the Eighth Schedule explains what listing does.

At the 2011 census, as tabulated by City Population from the Registrar General’s data, Chhattisgarh had 2,55,45,198 people. Scheduled Tribes numbered 78,22,902, which is 30.6 percent by tuput’s arithmetic, and Scheduled Castes 32,74,269, or 12.8 percent.

An economy of Rs 6.3 lakh crore that leans on mining receipts

PRS puts the state’s gross state domestic product (GSDP, the value of goods and services produced in a year) at Rs 6,31,290 crore for 2025-26 on the revised estimates, and projects Rs 7,09,553 crore for 2026-27, growth of 12 percent. A lakh crore is a trillion rupees. At current prices the shares for 2025-26 are 21 percent agriculture, 46 percent manufacturing and 33 percent services. Per capita GSDP is estimated at Rs 2,03,196, up 10 percent, against Rs 2,51,393 for India’s per capita GDP, which PRS reports from MoSPI data.

The Indian Bureau of Mines calls Chhattisgarh the sole producer of tin concentrates and moulding sand. Its Yearbook for 2022 says the state holds about 36 percent of India’s tin ore resources, 20 percent of its haematite iron ore, 18 percent of its coal and 11 percent of its dolomite, and it names the Bailadila deposit in Dantewada district among the biggest iron ore fields in the country. Coal resources came to 80,774 million tonnes on 1 April 2023. The Ministry of Steel’s profile of the Steel Authority of India lists the Bhilai Steel Plant in Chhattisgarh as a maker of rails up to 260 metres long, plates, TMT bars and wire rods, with seven iron ore mines in the state administered from Bhilai, among them Dalli Mechanical and Rajhara Mechanical.

Mining also pays the state’s bills. PRS estimates Rs 19,000 crore of non-tax revenue from mining in 2026-27, 76 percent of the state’s own non-tax revenue and 13 percent of all revenue receipts. It adds that only 9 percent of blocks auctioned between 2015-16 and 2024-25 had begun operating in Chhattisgarh, against 54 percent in Odisha, and says a Parliamentary Standing Committee in 2025 tied delays to clearances from central and state authorities.

Of Rs 1,43,000 crore in revenue receipts budgeted for 2026-27, PRS puts Rs 77,000 crore (54 percent) from the state’s own sources and Rs 66,000 crore (46 percent) from the Centre, including Rs 51,000 crore as the state’s share of central taxes. That share was 3.08 percent under the 14th Finance Commission, 3.41 percent under the 15th and is 3.30 percent under the 16th for 2026 to 2031. Both the 15th and 16th Commissions give forest a 10 percent weight in the formula, which our Finance Commission guide explains.

On spending, PRS reports that Chhattisgarh put 8.1 percent of GSDP (Rs 41,607 crore) into subsidies and transfers in 2023-24, against an average of 2.6 percent for all states. It names farm support under the Krishak Unnati Yojana, with Rs 10,000 crore budgeted for 2026-27, cash transfers under the Mahtari Vandan Yojana, food and power among them. Agriculture takes 17.9 percent of the budget against a state average of 5.7 percent. PRS calculates the 2026-27 fiscal deficit at 4.1 percent of GSDP because it does not count public account receipts as income, as the state’s own accounts do. The 16th Commission recommended a 3 percent limit for 2026 to 2031 and the state’s borrowing ceiling excludes central capital loans, which are Rs 8,500 crore in 2026-27. The state had budgeted a revenue surplus of Rs 2,804 crore for 2025-26, and PRS reports that the revised estimates show a revenue deficit of Rs 10,000 crore. Outstanding liabilities were 24.7 percent of GSDP in 2023-24 and are put at 21.4 percent at the end of 2026-27.

Ration shops, Scheduled Areas and a forest count

Economists Prasad Krishnamurthy, Vikram Pathania and Sharad Tandon studied how Chhattisgarh rebuilt its public distribution system (the network of ration shops selling subsidised grain). In its first years the state let private dealers hold shop licences, and from 2004 it moved shop management to local bodies. They write on Ideas for India that only about 10 percent of Chhattisgarh households used PDS rice when the state began, and that over 33 percent did by 2010, and that PDS rice procurement rose from just under 1 million tonnes in 2002 to just under 2 million in 2004. They add that about 90 percent of the gain in access, relative to neighbouring districts, came before 2004, that neighbouring states improved too afterwards, and that the success predates most of the reforms the National Food Security Act of 2013 later copied.

The Ministry of Panchayati Raj’s table of 22 December 2025 shows Chhattisgarh with 9,977 villages, 5,050 panchayats and 85 blocks in Fifth Schedule areas, with 13 districts fully covered and 6 partly. Only Jharkhand matches the 13. The Fifth Schedule and the PESA law that gives village assemblies extra powers there are explained in our piece on tribal areas. The ministry’s case study describes Khamdhogi, a village of 443 people in Kanker district, where a gram sabha set up under the Chhattisgarh PESA Rules, 2022 trained villagers who then took up forest produce collection, fisheries and bamboo rafting.

The Tribune, reporting on the Forest Survey of India’s 2023 report, wrote that Chhattisgarh recorded the biggest increase in forest and tree cover of any state, 683.62 square kilometres.

What comes next

The first phase of Census 2027, the houselisting, 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 1 March 2027, according to the Press Information Bureau. Chhattisgarh’s 2011 figures will be replaced by the new count, and Article 170 ties any change in Assembly seats to the census that follows.

In Bastar, the Union Home Minister said at Jagdalpur on 18 May 2026 that Chhattisgarh was now free of Naxalism, the armed Maoist movement, which he dated from 1970 to 2026. India TV reported that he said the Centre had set a target of 31 March 2026 in January 2024. That is the Union government’s own statement.

The 2026-27 budget plans education cities in the Abujhmad and Jagargonda regions with Rs 100 crore and puts capital outlay at Rs 26,500 crore, 63 percent above the revised figure for 2025-26, which was itself 38 percent below the amount budgeted.