Jharkhand Holds About 23 Per Cent of India's Geological Coal Resources, Reserves 28 of Its 81 Assembly Seats for Scheduled Tribes and Is One of Four States Where the Constitution Requires a Tribal Welfare Minister

The Ministry of Coal’s annual report puts Jharkhand’s geological coal resources at 93,254 million tonnes as of 1 April 2025. That is about 23 per cent of India’s 4,00,715 million tonnes (my division of the report’s two figures) and second only to Odisha’s 1,00,976 million tonnes. The same state reserves 28 of its 81 Assembly seats for Scheduled Tribes, the communities listed in a schedule to the Constitution for special protection, and it is one of four states for which Article 164 requires a minister in charge of tribal welfare.

The 2011 Census, still the latest completed count, found 3,29,88,134 people (3.30 crore) at 414 per square kilometre, and the Ministry of Tribal Affairs’ tables from that census put 26.2 per cent of them in Scheduled Tribes. Census 2027 is under way. This profile covers how the state came to exist, how it is governed, what its economy earns and where its law differs from the rest of India’s.

A state cut from 18 districts of Bihar

The Bihar Reorganisation Act, 2000 (Act 30 of 2000) created Jharkhand from 18 districts of Bihar, among them Ranchi, Dhanbad, Bokaro and Hazaribagh. The Centre fixed 15 November 2000 as the appointed day by a notification of 14 September 2000. The state’s own website now lists 24 districts, 5 divisions, 38 sub-divisions, 264 blocks and 32,620 villages, on a total area of 79.70 lakh hectares, with forest on more than 29 per cent of it.

The Prime Minister’s Office recorded on 10 November 2021 that the Union Cabinet had made 15 November Janjatiya Gaurav Divas, because the date is Birsa Munda’s birth anniversary. That is also Jharkhand’s foundation day. Birsa’s own birth year is disputed, as our account of the Ulgulan sets out.

Who governs Jharkhand, and how

The Assembly has 81 seats, set by section 12 of the 2000 Act, and one house only. Article 168 names the states that have a Legislative Council as well, and Jharkhand is not among them. The Election Commission’s September 2024 review described the 81 seats as 44 general, 9 reserved for Scheduled Castes and 28 for Scheduled Tribes, with 2.59 crore registered electors on 20 September 2024. Jharkhand sends 14 members to the Lok Sabha and 6 to the Rajya Sabha under sections 9 and 7 of the Act.

Article 164(1) carries a proviso that Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh and Odisha shall each have a Minister in charge of tribal welfare. The 94th Amendment replaced Bihar’s name with Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand in that proviso from 12 June 2006.

Jharkhand’s constituency map has an unusual legal history. The Delimitation Commission issued final orders for Jharkhand on 30 April and 17 August 2007, and Parliament’s Delimitation (Amendment) Act, 2008 says they “shall have no legal effect”. The Act kept the earlier constituencies in force until 2026. Our explainer on seat-sharing covers the national freeze.

The High Court of Jharkhand’s history page traces the court to a Patna High Court circuit bench set up at Ranchi on 6 March 1972 and made permanent on 8 April 1976. The Jharkhand court itself came into existence on 15 November 2000. Ranchi is the capital, with Dumka as sub-capital, and Hindi is the official language, according to the state portal.

Scheduled Areas, the Governor and a 2010 ruling

The Fifth Schedule of the Constitution applies to Scheduled Areas, tribal-majority districts or blocks that the President notifies, in every state except Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram. Paragraph 5 lets the Governor decide by notification that a law of Parliament or the state does not apply there, or applies with changes. Paragraph 4 sets up a Tribes Advisory Council of up to 20 members, about three-fourths of them Scheduled Tribe members of the Assembly, to advise on matters the Governor refers to it. Our guide to the Fifth and Sixth Schedules explains both.

The Supreme Court’s 2010 judgment traces Jharkhand’s Scheduled Areas through orders of 1950, 1977, 2003 and 2007, and back to a Scheduled Districts Act of 1874 that covered the Santhal Parganas and Chota Nagpur. A Press Information Bureau table of 22 December 2025 counts 16,022 villages, 2,074 panchayats and 131 blocks in Jharkhand’s Scheduled Areas, with 13 districts fully covered and 3 partly.

The Panchayats (Extension to the Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996, known as PESA, gives each village’s gram sabha, the assembly of its voters, a say over land and minor minerals. Its section 4 reserves at least half the panchayat seats in these areas for Scheduled Tribes, reserves every chairperson post for them, and makes a gram sabha’s recommendation mandatory before a prospecting licence or mining lease for minor minerals is granted.

The chairperson reservation reached the Supreme Court from Jharkhand. The Jharkhand High Court had struck down that reservation in the Jharkhand Panchayat Raj Act, 2001, along with provisions reserving 80 per cent of Scheduled Area panchayat seats for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and other backward classes. In Union of India v. Rakesh Kumar, decided on 12 January 2010, a three-judge bench led by Chief Justice K.G. Balakrishnan held all of those provisions valid under Article 243M(4)(b), which lets Parliament modify Part IX of the Constitution for Scheduled Areas. It told the State Election Commission to hold panchayat elections as early as possible.

The rules that put PESA into practice came later. The PIB table of 22 December 2025 listed Jharkhand with Odisha as having only draft PESA rules. The Jharkhand cabinet approved the rules the next day, 23 December 2025, and a PTI report said the state had not implemented the Act until then.

What the economy earns

The Jharkhand budget for 2026-27, presented on 24 February 2026, puts the state’s gross state domestic product (GSDP, the value of what it produces in a year) at Rs 5,16,255 crore in 2024-25 at current prices. PRS Legislative Research reports growth of 7 per cent at constant prices that year, against 6.5 per cent for India. By its figures, agriculture, manufacturing and services contributed 23, 32 and 45 per cent.

Income per person was Rs 1,28,253 in 2024-25, a little over half the national Rs 2,34,859. Of Rs 1,36,210 crore of 2026-27 revenue receipts, the budget expects 49 per cent from the state’s own resources and 51 per cent from the Centre, 38 per cent as its share of central taxes and 13 per cent as grants. Outstanding liabilities are put at 25.8 per cent of GSDP at the end of 2026-27.

Minerals, and the question of who may tax them

Besides coal, the state’s own page lists uranium, mica, bauxite, granite, gold, silver, graphite, magnetite, dolomite, fireclay, quartz, feldspar, iron and copper among its minerals. Its figure of 32 per cent of India’s coal does not match the ministry’s inventory, which gives about 23 per cent, so this profile uses the ministry’s.

On 25 July 2024 a nine-judge Constitution Bench ruled in Mineral Area Development Authority v. Steel Authority of India that royalty paid by a mining lessee is not a tax. Eight judges, led by the Chief Justice, held that states may tax mineral-bearing land and mineral rights, subject to any limits Parliament sets. The judgment names Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Odisha as mineral-rich states with lower per capita incomes than the national averages. Our piece on the Seventh Schedule explains the lists the Court was reading.

Jharkhand notified its Mineral Bearing Land Cess Act, 2024 in October 2024. PRS says the state expects Rs 14,656 crore from the cess in 2026-27, up from Rs 13,442 crore in 2025-26, booked across tax and non-tax heads. The same analysis says 2025-26 non-tax revenue from mining is expected at Rs 16,000 crore against a target of Rs 21,900 crore. Our explainer on the Finance Commission shows how central tax shares are set.

The state also claims Rs 1.36 lakh crore in dues for coal mined by entities such as Coal India. The Finance Minister told the Assembly on 3 March 2025 that legal action would begin, and a joint committee of Centre and state formed on 1 March 2025 was to verify the amount. The report carried no public statement from the Centre on the claim.

What comes next

The Union Cabinet approved Census 2027 on 12 December 2025 at a cost of Rs 11,718.24 crore, with houselisting from April to September 2026 and population enumeration in February 2027. Jharkhand’s first count since 2011 falls in that second phase.