Himachal Pradesh, Which Became a State on 25 January 1971, Has 4.93 Per Cent of Its People in Multidimensional Poverty Against 14.96 Per Cent for India and Holds Its Winter Assembly Session in Dharamshala

NITI Aayog’s 2023 review of the National Multidimensional Poverty Index counts 4.93 per cent of Himachal Pradesh’s people as poor in 2019-21, down from 7.59 per cent in 2015-16. The figure for India is 14.96 per cent. The index scores households on 12 indicators across health and nutrition, education and standard of living, so it measures more than income. PRS Legislative Research reports the state’s own estimate of per capita income for 2025-26 as Rs 2,83,626, against Rs 2,19,575 for India, about 29 per cent higher by tuput’s arithmetic.

Himachal Pradesh has been a state since 25 January 1971. It sends 4 members to the Lok Sabha and 3 to the Rajya Sabha. The census figures below come from 2011, because the next count is under way.

How 30 princely states and the Punjab hills became a state

All India Radio reports that Himachal Pradesh was formed on 15 April 1948 by combining 30 princely states of different sizes, and that the state marks the day each year as Himachal Day. When the Constitution came into force on 26 January 1950, its First Schedule described the territories as ones administered as if they were Chief Commissioner’s Provinces (areas run by an administrator the Union appoints) under the names of Himachal Pradesh and Bilaspur.

By 1966 Himachal Pradesh was a Union territory, which is an area the Centre administers with a status below a state’s. The Punjab Reorganisation Act, 1966, dated 18 September 1966 and in force from 1 November, added to it the districts of Simla (the Act’s spelling), Kangra, Kulu and Lahul and Spiti, Nalagarh, parts of Una and the Dalhousie area of Chamba. The State of Himachal Pradesh Act, 1970 (Act 53 of 1970) is dated 25 December 1970 and left the start date to a government notification. The Constitution’s footnotes date its effect from 25 January 1971.

The Act made the state the eighteenth entry in the First Schedule’s list of states at that time. It fixed the Assembly at 68 seats, gave the state 4 Lok Sabha seats and 3 Rajya Sabha seats, and placed the High Court’s principal seat at Simla. Our explainer on India’s 28 states and 8 Union territories sets this alongside the other changes of the map.

How the state is governed

The legislature has one House, the Vidhan Sabha (Legislative Assembly). Article 168 lists the states that also have a Legislative Council, and Himachal Pradesh is not among them. Our explainer on states with two Houses names those that do.

The Election Commission’s note of 14 October 2022 says the Assembly has 68 seats, 17 reserved for Scheduled Castes and 3 for Scheduled Tribes under the Delimitation Order of 2008. It counted 55,74,793 electors on the final roll, 67,532 of them service voters. The Tribune reported in October 2026 that Kangra district returns 15 of the 68 members, Mandi has the next most, and Kinnaur and Lahaul and Spiti have one each.

The four Lok Sabha seats are Hamirpur, Mandi, Kangra and Shimla, and Shimla is reserved for Scheduled Castes, the Tribune reported for the 2024 poll. The Fourth Schedule gives the state three Rajya Sabha seats. Our piece on how Lok Sabha seats are shared among states explains why the totals are frozen.

The 2011 Census counted 68,64,602 people, 34,81,873 men and 33,82,729 women, in 12 districts. That is about 972 women for every 1,000 men by tuput’s arithmetic. Kangra was the largest district at 15,10,075 people and Lahul and Spiti the smallest at 31,564. The Himachal Pradesh Official Language Act, 1975, in force from 1 January 1975, makes Hindi in the Devanagari script the official language and lets English continue in the Legislature until the government directs otherwise.

Shimla is the capital, and the 1970 Act fixed the High Court’s principal seat there. The Assembly’s winter session of 26 November to 5 December 2025 met at Tapovan in Dharamshala, All India Radio reported. The Tribune reported on 19 January 2017 that the Chief Minister of the day, Virbhadra Singh, formally declared Dharamsala the state’s second capital, and that a full winter session had first been held outside Shimla in December 2005.

What the economy earns

GSDP, gross state domestic product, is the value of what a state produces in a year. PRS estimates Himachal Pradesh’s real growth at 8.3 per cent in 2025-26, against 7.4 per cent for India. It puts agriculture at 14.3 per cent of the economy, manufacturing at 39.4 per cent and services at 46.3 per cent at current prices. The Sixteenth Finance Commission groups the state with Sikkim and Uttarakhand as relatively richer hill states, and names proximity to larger markets and Union tax concessions for industrial units among their advantages (paragraph 5.73).

Invest India, the Government of India’s investment promotion agency, says apples supply 76 per cent of the state’s horticulture output by value and that Himachal Pradesh holds nearly a quarter of India’s harnessable hydropower potential. Both figures are the agency’s own and tuput found no second source for them.

The budget presented on 21 March 2026 projects GSDP at Rs 2,77,497 crore for 2026-27, up 9 per cent. Of Rs 40,361 crore in revenue receipts, Rs 19,238 crore (48 per cent) is the state’s own and Rs 21,123 crore (52 per cent) comes from the Centre, as Rs 13,950 crore of shared central taxes and Rs 7,173 crore of grants. State GST is the largest own tax, at 43 per cent. Education takes 19.6 per cent of spending, against 14.5 per cent on average across states in their 2025-26 budgets, PRS says.

What sets Himachal Pradesh apart

Section 118 of the Himachal Pradesh Tenancy and Land Reforms Act, 1972 decides who may buy farmland. LiveLaw reports that under the Act only an agriculturist, a landowner who personally cultivates land in the state, can buy it, and anyone else needs the state government’s prior permission. The Ninth Schedule of the Constitution lists the Act, with four other Himachal land laws. Under Article 31B, an Act in that Schedule is not void merely because it conflicts with the fundamental rights in Part III.

In Ajay Dabra v. Pyare Ram, decided on 31 January 2023, the Supreme Court bench of Justices P S Narasimha and Sudhanshu Dhulia dismissed the appeals. LiveLaw reports that it held that assigning rights in a land deal to an agriculturist who would use the land for non-farm purposes would defeat the Act’s purpose, and quotes the Court as saying the provision exists “to save the small agricultural holding of poor persons” and to check conversion of farmland to other uses.

The Tribune calls Shyam Saran Negi, of Kalpa in Kinnaur, the first voter of independent India. It reports that he was part of a polling party that voted on 25 October 1951, months before the rest of the country, because snow would have shut the area by the February 1952 polling. He voted for the 34th time, by postal ballot, on 2 November 2022 and died on 5 November 2022 aged 106.

The Central Tibetan Administration says the Dalai Lama set up the exile administration at Mussoorie on 29 April 1959 and that it moved to Dharamsala in May 1960. Our piece on the Atal Tunnel covers the road tunnel that links the Lahaul valley to Manali.

What comes next

The Fifteenth Finance Commission recommended Rs 37,199 crore of revenue deficit grants for the state over five years, grants that cover the gap between a state’s revenue and its spending, PRS records. The grant fell from Rs 10,249 crore in 2021-22 to Rs 3,257 crore in 2025-26. The Sixteenth Commission recommended none for 2026-31 and argued that repeated grants weaken the incentive to reform (paragraphs 9.49 and 9.50). Himachal Pradesh was among 13 states that told it such grants were indispensable, and the Union Government had favoured ending them (paragraphs 9.28 and 9.31). The state’s share of central taxes rises from 0.83 to 0.914 per cent. Our comparison of state finances puts these numbers beside other states.

PRS says the 2026-27 budget targets a fiscal deficit of 3.5 per cent of GSDP, against 6.6 per cent revised for 2025-26. Salaries, pensions and interest take 88 per cent of revenue receipts.

The census count now under way will replace the 2011 figure of 68,64,602 people. In mid-October 2026 the state government set up a commission under retired High Court judge Dharam Chand Chaudhary to review districts, sub-divisions, tehsils and development blocks, with six months from notification to report, the Tribune reported on 15 October 2026.