Nagaland, the 16th State, Has 17 Districts, 60 Assembly Seats and an Article 371A Under Which Acts of Parliament on Naga Customary Law and Land Apply Only If Its Assembly Resolves That They Should

Article 371A of the Constitution, in force from 1 December 1963, says that no Act of Parliament on the religious or social practices of the Nagas, Naga customary law and procedure, the administration of justice that follows that law, or the ownership and transfer of land and its resources applies to Nagaland “unless the Legislative Assembly of Nagaland by a resolution so decides”. The state has 17 districts, 60 Assembly seats, 1 Lok Sabha seat and 1 Rajya Sabha seat. It covers 16,579 square kilometres, its capital Kohima stands 1,444 metres above sea level, and the 2011 Census counted 19,78,502 people. Census figures below come from that count because the next one is under way.

How a frontier area became the 16th state

On 1 December 1957 the Naga Hills District of Assam and the Tuensang Frontier Division of the North-East Frontier Agency (now Arunachal Pradesh) were joined as the centrally administered Naga Hills Tuensang Area, the state’s tourism department records. The State of Nagaland Act, 1962 (Act 27 of 1962) then formed a state from that area, divided it into Kohima, Mokokchung and Tuensang districts, and took it out of Assam. The Constitution’s First Schedule lists Nagaland as entry 16, and its footnotes give 1 December 1963 as the date the state and Article 371A took effect.

The Act allotted 1 seat in each House of Parliament, made the whole state a single Lok Sabha constituency, and set the Assembly at 60 members. It also created one High Court for Assam and Nagaland. The first Assembly election was held from 10 to 16 January 1964, Nagaland’s Basic Facts booklet says.

How statehood came about is still discussed in Nagaland. In an address the state’s information department published on 5 May 2023, an Advisor to the state government said the 16-Point Agreement, signed with the Naga People’s Convention on 26 July 1960, formed the basis for creating the state. He gave his own view that the agreement was never accepted as a final political solution and that its signatories lacked the people’s mandate.

How the state is governed

Article 168 names the states whose legislatures have two Houses, and Nagaland is not among them, so the Legislative Assembly alone makes the state’s laws. Under Article 172 an Assembly lasts five years from its first meeting. The one elected on 27 February 2023, with results declared on 2 March, is the 14th, so the next election falls in 2028.

PRS Legislative Research records that the 14th Assembly has 60 seats and two women members, the first women ever elected to it. Only about 1 per cent of candidates in Assembly elections since 1964 were women, PRS notes. The Basic Facts booklet lists four spells of President’s Rule, the most recent from 3 January to 12 March 2008, and our explainer on Article 356 covers the law.

Nagaland has 17 districts. The government’s tourism page says Meluri became the 17th on 2 November 2024, after Shamator was carved from Tuensang on 19 January 2022 as the 16th. Kohima is the capital and Dimapur, with 3,78,811 people in 2011 before it was divided, is the commercial centre. English is the official language, the state portal says. The 1962 Act created one High Court for Assam and Nagaland, and the information department says the Gauhati High Court’s Kohima Bench opened as a circuit bench on 1 December 1972.

The state portal lists 17 tribes, among them the Angami, Ao, Konyak, Lotha and Sumi. Its Inner Line Permit portal names 15 major Naga tribes and four non-Naga tribes, the Kuki, Kachari, Garo and Mikir.

Article 371A and the village councils

Its first clause is the switch described above: Parliament’s laws on the four listed matters reach Nagaland only after the Assembly passes a resolution. The same clause makes the Governor responsible for law and order, to be exercised in his “individual judgment” after consulting the Council of Ministers, for as long as he judges that the disturbances before statehood continue, and it lets the President end that responsibility by order. It also set up a transition for Tuensang district: for ten years from statehood, or longer if the Governor so notified on the advice of a 35-member regional council, the Governor administered the district himself. Our explainer on Article 371 sets the clause beside the other states’ provisions and covers the Supreme Court’s reading of it.

Village government follows the same logic. Article 243M keeps the Constitution’s panchayat chapter out of Nagaland, Meghalaya and Mizoram unless the Assembly extends it by a resolution passed by a majority of its total membership and two-thirds of those present and voting. Our piece on panchayats and municipalities explains what the chapter contains.

In its place the Nagaland Village and Area Councils Act, 1978 requires every recognised village to have a Village Council. Section 4 says the members are chosen by the villagers in line with prevailing customary practices, with the State Government’s approval, and that hereditary village chiefs sit on the council with the right to vote. Members must be Indian citizens aged 25 or more, and a council lasts five years. In March 2026 the Home Commissioner’s notification asked recognised villages to select councils for 2026 to 2031 by custom, EastMojo reported.

What the economy earns

PRS estimates that Nagaland’s GSDP, the total value of what the state produces, grew 10.3 per cent in real terms in 2025-26, against 7.4 per cent for India. Services contribute 66 per cent of the economy, agriculture 23 per cent and manufacturing 11 per cent at current prices. Per capita income is estimated at Rs 1,92,282, against Rs 2,19,575 for India, which by tuput’s arithmetic is about 12 per cent lower. GSDP was Rs 40,369 crore in 2024-25 and the 2026-27 budget, presented on 26 March 2026, projects Rs 48,500 crore.

That budget shows a revenue surplus of Rs 1,522 crore, 3.1 per cent of GSDP, and a fiscal deficit target of 3 per cent. PRS says the deficit in 2025-26 was 6.7 per cent on the revised figures, and 3.2 per cent if central 50-year interest-free capital loans were counted as grants. Of Rs 19,495 crore in revenue receipts, Rs 2,714 crore (14 per cent) is the state’s own and Rs 16,781 crore (86 per cent) comes from the Centre, as a share of central taxes (38 per cent) and grants (48 per cent), among them a special grant of Rs 4,500 crore for the revenue gap. The 16th Finance Commission gives Nagaland 0.48 per cent of the divisible pool of central taxes for 2026 to 2031, down from 0.57 per cent, and our piece on the Finance Commission explains how the shares are set.

Salaries, pensions and interest take 68 per cent of revenue receipts. State GST is 66 per cent of the state’s own tax revenue, which is 4.3 per cent of GSDP. In 2024-25 Nagaland registered 9,858 heavy goods vehicles, more than Assam’s 4,513, and its taxes on vehicles raised 0.55 per cent of GSDP, the highest among the north-eastern states PRS compared.

What sets Nagaland apart

Kohima is where the Battle of Kohima was fought. The National Army Museum in London records that the Japanese Fifteenth Army advanced on India’s north-east frontier in March 1944 and that Kohima, held by about 2,500 men, faced 15,000 Japanese troops. Between 5 and 18 April the garrison held a perimeter that shrank to 350 metres square, and in one sector only the width of the town’s tennis court separated the two sides. The museum puts British casualties at Kohima at 4,000. In 2013 the museum ran a poll on Britain’s greatest land battle, and at the debate that followed its audience chose Imphal and Kohima as the overall winner, its event page says.

The tourism department says the Hornbill Festival is held every year from 1 to 10 December, and it opens on 1 December, the date Nagaland became a state. The department’s page calls it the “Festival of Festivals”.

Visitors from outside need an Inner Line Permit, which the state’s portal says the Bengal Eastern Frontier Regulation of 1873 requires of anyone who is not an indigenous inhabitant. On 24 July 2026 a Division Bench of the Gauhati High Court dismissed three petitions against notifications that extended the permit to Dimapur, Chumoukedima and Niuland. LiveLaw reported that the court held the 1873 Regulation remains valid law, with the line “A law does not cease to be law merely because of its antiquity.” The petitioners had argued the notifications broke Articles 14, 19 and 21.

What comes next

On 5 February 2026 the Centre, the Nagaland government and the Eastern Nagaland Peoples’ Organisation, which speaks for eight recognised tribes of six eastern districts, signed an agreement to create a Frontier Nagaland Territorial Authority. It covers Tuensang, Mon, Kiphire, Longleng, Noklak and Shamator, with powers over 46 subjects, Akashvani and the Home Ministry report. On 3 June 2026 the organisation’s executive council asked for it to be carried out without further delay, Eastern Mirror reported.

The Home Ministry’s note of 23 April 2026 records a framework agreement signed with the NSCN(IM) on 3 August 2015 and ceasefires with three other groups extended to April 2027. Its list contains no final settlement. The same note says the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act now applies in 9 districts and 21 police stations in 5 other districts of Nagaland.

The next Assembly election is due in 2028, and the census count now under way will replace the 2011 figure of 19,78,502 people.