Delhi's Economy Produces Rs 5.93 Lakh per Person, 2.4 Times India's Average, in a Territory That Is 97.5 Per Cent Urban and Holds Three UNESCO World Heritage Sites

Delhi’s output per person in 2025-26 is estimated at Rs 5,93,071, about 2.4 times India’s Rs 2,51,393, according to PRS Legislative Research’s analysis of the Delhi budget for 2026-27. The territory’s gross state domestic product (GSDP, the value of everything produced inside it in a year) is put at Rs 13,27,000 crore, or Rs 13.27 lakh crore, for 2025-26, and PRS reports that services supply 86 per cent of it.

The 2011 Census counted 1,67,87,941 people (1.68 crore), 97.5 per cent of them in urban areas. Delhi sends 7 members to the Lok Sabha and 3 to the Rajya Sabha, elects a 70-seat Assembly, and since 22 May 2022 has had a single Municipal Corporation of Delhi. How the elected government and the Lieutenant Governor divide power is in our explainer on Article 239AA. This profile covers the rest.

How Delhi became a capital territory

The seat of the Government of India was announced as moving to Delhi on 12 December 1911, according to the New Delhi Municipal Council’s own account, which adds that Raisina Hill was picked for the Viceregal Palace and that Edwin Lutyens and Herbert Baker built the new capital. The legal change followed in 1912. A proclamation of 17 September 1912, Notification No. 911, took a territory that had been part of the Punjab under the direct management of the Governor-General in Council, to be run by a Chief Commissioner as a separate province. The Delhi Laws Act, 1912, dated 18 September, came into force on 1 October 1912.

After the Constitution took effect, Delhi was a Part C State. The Government of Part C States Act 1951 gave it an elected legislature and a Council of Ministers with limited powers, and the Supreme Court recorded in 2023 that the subjects kept out of its reach included municipal corporations. The Fazl Ali Commission, whose work led to the States Reorganisation Act 1956, wrote that “municipal autonomy in the form of a corporation” was the right solution for Delhi. The Seventh Amendment of 1956 then ended Part C States and made Delhi a Union Territory run by the President through an administrator.

The Delhi High Court was established on 31 October 1966, under an Act passed on 5 September 1966 and with four judges at the start. Before that, Delhi’s cases went to a Circuit Bench of the Punjab High Court. The directly elected Assembly returned through the Sixty-ninth Amendment, in force since 1 February 1992.

How Delhi is governed

The Legislative Assembly has 70 seats, 12 of them reserved for Scheduled Castes and none for Scheduled Tribes. The Election Commission’s electoral roll published on 6 January 2025 listed 1,55,37,634 electors. In Parliament, a PIB release of 16 March 2024 gave Delhi 7 Lok Sabha seats, and the Constitution’s Fourth Schedule gives it 3 Rajya Sabha seats.

Article 130 provides that the Supreme Court “shall sit in Delhi or in such other place or places” as the Chief Justice of India appoints with the President’s approval. The Delhi High Court, whose sanctioned strength its website lists as 45 permanent and 15 additional judges, is in the same city.

The 2011 Census counted nine districts. A notification reported on 26 December 2025 reorganised Delhi’s 11 districts into 13, dissolving Shahdara and creating Old Delhi, Central North and Outer North, and the government’s list now reads South East, Old Delhi, North, New Delhi, Central, Central North, South West, Outer North, North West, North East, East, South and West.

Three civic bodies, one made by Parliament in 1957

Municipal government in Delhi rests on a central law. The Supreme Court noted on 5 August 2024 that it is governed by the Delhi Municipal Corporation Act, enacted by Parliament in 1957. Govind Ballabh Pant introduced the Bill on 2 September 1957 and the Act was notified on 28 December 1957, the judgment records. As introduced, the Corporation was to have 80 councillors, 12 of them reserved for Scheduled Castes.

In 2012 the Corporation was split into three, North, South and East, with 272 wards between them (104, 104 and 64), according to Citizen Matters. Parliament reversed that with the Delhi Municipal Corporation (Amendment) Act, 2022, Act 10 of 2022. Two Home Ministry notifications dated 18 May 2022 appointed 22 May 2022 as the day the Act came into force and the single Municipal Corporation of Delhi was constituted. The ward count was capped at 250, down from 272, and LiveLaw reports that the Ministry of Home Affairs issued the final delimitation notification on 17 October 2022, with 42 wards reserved for Scheduled Castes and the election scheduled for 4 December 2022. The Corporation also has 10 nominated persons with special knowledge of municipal administration, under Section 3(3)(b)(i) of the 1957 Act.

Two smaller bodies sit alongside it. The New Delhi Municipal Council traces itself to the Imperial Delhi Committee of 25 March 1913. The NDMC Act of May 1994 replaced the Punjab Municipal Act 1911 and the Council first met on 23 December 1995. The NDMC’s site describes a council headed by a chairperson with two MLAs, five Central Government officers or public-undertaking officers, four eminent persons nominated by the Centre in consultation with the Chief Minister, and the MP for New Delhi. The Delhi Cantonment Board is the third body.

Using 2011 Census data, Citizen Matters calculated that the merged corporation’s area covers 94.23 per cent of Delhi’s land and 97.81 per cent of its people. The NDMC area has 2.88 per cent of the land and 1.54 per cent of the people, and the Cantonment Board 2.89 per cent and 0.66 per cent. How the Seventy-fourth Amendment structures urban local bodies across India is in how panchayats and municipalities work.

What the economy is made of

PRS puts Delhi’s GSDP at Rs 12,13,000 crore in 2024-25 and Rs 13,27,000 crore in the 2025-26 revised estimate. Real growth, measured at constant 2011-12 prices, is 8.5 per cent for 2025-26 against 7.4 per cent estimated for India. At current prices the 2025-26 shares are agriculture 1 per cent, manufacturing 13 per cent and services 86 per cent, and per-person output is up 7.5 per cent on the year before.

The budget presented on 24 March 2026 estimates Delhi’s own tax revenue for 2026-27 at Rs 74,000 crore, about 91 per cent of its revenue receipts, with Rs 7,092 crore, about 9 per cent, in grants from the Centre. State GST brings in Rs 43,500 crore, 59 per cent of own tax. Total expenditure is Rs 1,03,700 crore, of which education, sports, arts and culture take 21.1 per cent against a state average of 14.5 per cent, and health 14.4 per cent against 6.2 per cent, PRS notes. The same analysis lists a fiscal deficit of Rs 16,966 crore for 2026-27.

Delhi’s first metro corridor opened on 24 December 2002, as India’s metro networks describes. The measured state of the air is in Delhi air: what the measurements show.

Who lives in Delhi

The 2011 Census, the latest published count, found 1,67,87,941 people, up 21.2 per cent from 2001. Of them 1,63,68,899 lived in urban areas and 4,19,042 in rural ones, the rural count having fallen 55.6 per cent over the decade. Literacy was 86.2 per cent, the sex ratio 868 women to 1,000 men, and Scheduled Castes made up 16.75 per cent of the population.

North West district was the largest, at 36,56,539 people. New Delhi district, which includes the Connaught Place, Chanakya Puri and Parliament Street sub-districts, was the smallest at 1,42,004. Citizen Matters puts the territory’s density at 11,305 people per square kilometre on its calculation from the Census, and the density in the area of the East Delhi corporation at 37,281.

What sets Delhi apart

Delhi is the seat of the Union’s institutions. The Supreme Court sits there under Article 130, and the capital city holds three UNESCO World Heritage Sites. The Red Fort Complex was inscribed in 2007, and UNESCO’s text says it was where Indian independence was first celebrated. Humayun’s Tomb, built in the 1560s with the patronage of Akbar, and the Qutb Minar and its monuments were both inscribed in 1993. UNESCO measures the Qutb Minar at 72.5 metres, the tallest masonry tower in India.

Its municipal statute is a central one as well. Parliament passed it in 1957 and amended it in 2022 to merge the three corporations.

What comes next

The 13-district map was notified in December 2025, and The Week reports that registration offices will be expanded from 22 to 39 under a separate notification. The 2026-27 budget provides Rs 17,624 crore for capital outlay and projects a revenue surplus of Rs 9,092 crore, according to PRS. Every population figure above is from the 2011 Census, the latest published count.