Mizoram Had a Literacy Rate of 91.33 Per Cent at the 2011 Census, Third Highest of Any State or Union Territory, and Has Been a State Since 20 February 1987 With Article 371G Shielding Mizo Customary Law and Land

The Census of India counted 8,48,175 literate people among 9,28,675 Mizoram residents aged seven and over in 2011. That is 91.33 per cent, against 73.0 per cent for India in the NITI Aayog’s reading of the same census. Dividing the Census abstract’s figures for every state and Union territory (tuput’s arithmetic), only Kerala (94.00) and Lakshadweep (91.85) come out ahead.

Mizoram covers 21,081 square kilometres, according to the Forest Survey of India, and had 10,97,206 people at the 2011 Census. That census is the source of the population figures here because the next one is still under way. The capital is Aizawl, and the Forest Survey’s 2023 table gives the state 11 districts. The Census itself counted eight.

From the Lushai Hills to statehood on 20 February 1987

The Mizoram Legislative Assembly’s own history says the Mizo Hills were left out of the Government of India Acts of 1919 and 1935. Villages were run by hereditary chiefs with councils of elders until the Lushai Hills District (Chiefship Abolition) Act, 1952 of the Assam Assembly, in force from 1 January 1953, which the history treats as the start of modern parliamentary government there, with a District Council. The North-Eastern Areas (Reorganisation) Act, 1971 then took the Mizo District out of Assam and formed it into the Union territory of Mizoram, a territory the Centre administers directly. Its appointed day was 21 January 1972. The first session of the Mizoram Assembly met on 10 May 1972, with 30 elected and 3 nominated members.

Disturbances that the Memorandum itself dates from 1966 set the Mizo National Front against the Government. The Memorandum of Settlement signed in New Delhi on 30 June 1986 laid out the terms of an end to them. Laldenga signed for the Front, the Union Home Secretary for the Government of India and the Chief Secretary for the Government of Mizoram. In it the Front undertook to bring its underground personnel out with their arms and return them to civil life, and the Centre undertook to confer statehood. Its closing paragraphs provide for payments to the families of people killed in “disturbances in 1966 and thereafter”.

Parliament then acted in August 1986. The Constitution (Fifty-third Amendment) Act inserted Article 371G, and the State of Mizoram Act, 1986 (Act 34 of 1986) established the state from an appointed day that a notification of 11 February 1987 fixed as 20 February 1987. The Assembly’s history says the Prime Minister of the day inaugurated statehood on that date, and that under the accord Laldenga, the Front’s president, took over as Chief Minister for six months before the first state election in 1987. Our explainer on Article 371 sets 371G beside the other states with provisions of this kind.

How the state is governed

The Assembly has 40 members, as Section 10 of the 1986 Act provides, and Article 371G(b) says it shall have “not less than forty”. The Representation of the People Act, 1950 reserves 39 of the 40 seats for Scheduled Tribes. Article 332(3A) is the rule behind that: where every member of a state’s earlier Assembly was a Scheduled Tribe member, all seats but one are reserved until seats are readjusted on the first census after 2026. Mizoram sends one member to the Lok Sabha, from a seat reserved for Scheduled Tribes, and one to the Rajya Sabha. It has one legislative chamber, since the Third Schedule of the 1950 Act lists no Legislative Council for it.

The Gauhati High Court has its principal seat in Guwahati and is the common High Court for Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram and Nagaland, under the 2012 amendment to the 1971 Act. Its Aizawl Bench was set up on 5 July 1990 as a permanent bench. Mizoram’s Official Language Act, dated 17 February 1975, provides for Mizo as the language of official business and permits English as well.

Below the state sit three Sixth Schedule councils, the Constitution’s arrangement for self-governing tribal districts. The Constitution’s table lists the Chakma, Mara and Lai districts for Mizoram. The Chakma council’s website says all three were created on 29 April 1972 by dividing the Pwi-Lakher Regional Council. PRS Legislative Research reports that the 2026-27 budget gives them Rs 275 crore (Lai), Rs 243 crore (Mara) and Rs 170 crore (Chakma). Paragraph 12B of the Sixth Schedule says a state law on a council’s subjects, or one restricting non-distilled alcoholic liquor, applies in its district only if the council so directs. The Fifth and Sixth Schedules explainer covers the councils’ other powers. Article 243M(2)(a) separately says Part IX of the Constitution, the part on panchayats (elected village bodies), does not apply to Nagaland, Meghalaya or Mizoram.

What Article 371G protects

Article 371G follows paragraph 4.3 of the 1986 Memorandum, according to the Statement of Objects of the Fifty-third Amendment. It says no Act of Parliament on four matters applies to Mizoram “unless the Legislative Assembly of the State of Mizoram by a resolution so decides”. The four are the religious or social practices of the Mizos, Mizo customary law and procedure, the administration of civil and criminal justice where decisions follow Mizo customary law, and the ownership and transfer of land. The clause does not reach Central Acts already in force in the Union territory before the amendment took effect on 20 February 1987.

The Memorandum added two undertakings. The state would review and codify existing customs, “keeping in view that an individual Mizo may prefer to be governed by Acts of Parliament”, and the Inner Line Regulation, as then in force in Mizoram, would not be amended or repealed without consulting the state government. On the Front’s request to unify Mizo-inhabited areas of other states, the Memorandum records the Government’s reply that Article 3 of the Constitution sets the procedure and that it could make no commitment.

What the economy earns

PRS Legislative Research, using Mizoram’s Economic Survey, puts per capita GSDP (gross state domestic product, the value of a state’s output divided by its population) at Rs 2,87,097 for 2024-25, against Rs 2,34,859 for India, about 22 per cent higher. Real growth that year was 7.2 per cent against 6.5 per cent for the country. At current prices agriculture was 17 per cent of output, manufacturing 33 per cent and services 50 per cent. NITI Aayog’s brief says agriculture still employed 43.1 per cent of workers in 2022-23, with unemployment at 2.2 per cent against 3.2 per cent nationally and a female labour force participation rate of 45.1 per cent against 37 per cent.

The Chief Minister presented the 2026-27 budget on 26 February 2026. Of revenue receipts of Rs 14,994 crore, PRS reports Rs 2,760 crore (18 per cent) is the state’s own and Rs 12,235 crore (82 per cent) comes from the Centre. The state’s share of central taxes is put at Rs 8,608 crore, 24 per cent above the revised figure for 2025-26, and the Sixteenth Finance Commission recommended 0.56 per cent of the divisible pool of central taxes for Mizoram for 2026 to 2031, up from 0.50 per cent. The budget estimates a revenue surplus of Rs 900 crore, 2.1 per cent of GSDP, after a revised deficit of Rs 376 crore in 2025-26, and PRS notes that revenue deficit grants (Rs 586 crore in 2025-26) are discontinued from 2026-27. The budget papers show 9,997 of 23,499 permanent government posts vacant, 43 per cent. Our comparison of state finances puts these ratios beside other states.

The Forest Survey’s 2023 report puts bamboo-bearing area inside recorded forest at 4,772 square kilometres, up 4.63 per cent from 4,561 in 2021. Scientists at the ICAR research complex in Umiam write that the bamboo species Melocanna baccifera flowers at intervals of 48 years, give or take two, an event called Mautam, and that the one before their study came in 1958. They recorded a rodent outbreak in Mizoram after the mass flowering of 2007 to 2008, and concluded that flowering alone did not raise rodent numbers significantly.

What sets Mizoram apart

Scheduled Tribe residents numbered 10,36,115 at the 2011 Census, 94.43 per cent of the state’s population by tuput’s division, the highest share of any state. Only Lakshadweep (94.80) is higher among states and Union territories, and Nagaland (86.48) is next among states. The Census table’s largest entry is “Any Mizo (Lushai) tribes” at 7,34,910, about 71 per cent of the Scheduled Tribe total, followed by Chakma at 96,972. Within its 2011 boundaries, Aizawl district held 4,00,309 people, 36.5 per cent of the state.

What comes next

The Bairabi to Sairang railway line, 51.38 kilometres long, was inaugurated on 13 September 2025. The Prime Minister’s Office put its cost at over Rs 8,070 crore and described it as connecting the state capital to the railway network for the first time. The Ministry of Railways says it has 45 tunnels totalling almost 16 kilometres and 153 bridges, the tallest pier 114 metres. In a release of 13 September 2026 it reports more than 1,100 train trips and over 15 lakh passengers in the first year, and more than 2,500 wagons of freight at Sairang, about 70 per cent of it construction material. A Sairang to Silchar passenger service began in January 2026.

The Mizo Language Development Board’s Eighth Schedule Study Group told the Chief Minister in January 2026, PTI reported, that its report on including Mizo in the Constitution’s list of scheduled languages was close to completion. The Eighth Schedule explainer describes what inclusion changes.

Seat boundaries wait on the census. Under Article 332(3A), the rule reserving all but one Assembly seat stays until seats are readjusted on the first census after 2026. The delimitation guide explains why boundary changes follow a census.