Tripura's Economy Was Estimated to Grow 8.7 Per Cent in 2024-25 Against 6.5 Per Cent for India, and 856 Kilometres of Its Border Run Along Bangladesh in the Third Smallest State

PRS Legislative Research estimates that Tripura’s economy grew 8.7 per cent in real terms in 2024-25, against 6.5 per cent for India. The state covers 10,491 square kilometres, which the Ministry of Development of North Eastern Region’s backgrounder calls the third smallest in the country, and about 856 km of its boundary, 84 per cent, runs along Bangladesh. The 2011 Census counted 36,73,917 people, and the census figures below come from that count because the next one is under way. Tripura sends 2 members to the Lok Sabha and 1 to the Rajya Sabha.

How a princely state became a state on 21 January 1972

The last king, Maharaja Bir Bikram Kishore Manikya, died on 17 May 1947. A Regency Council headed by Maharani Kanchan Prabha Devi then governed for the minor prince, Kirit Bikram Kishore Manikya Bahadur, the High Court of Tripura’s history page records. The regent signed the merger agreement with the Government of India, and both the court and the Ministry’s backgrounder give 15 October 1949 as the date the princely state joined the Union. Our account of Sardar Patel and the princely states covers the wider process.

Tripura became a Part C State, and the Constitution’s own entry still describes its territory as “administered as if it were a Chief Commissioner’s Province under the name of Tripura”. On 1 November 1956 it became a Union territory without a legislature. An elected Territorial Council replaced an advisory committee in 1957, and on 1 July 1963 a Legislative Assembly made up of the council’s members took over and a popular ministry (an elected government) was installed.

The North-Eastern Areas (Reorganisation) Act, 1971 (Act 81 of 1971, dated 30 December 1971) provided that “there shall be established a new State, to be known as the State of Tripura” from the Union territory’s land. The Act’s footnote gives the appointed day as 21 January 1972, notified on 6 January 1972. The same Act made Manipur and Meghalaya states and Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh Union territories, and our explainer on India’s 28 states and 8 Union territories places that day in the longer redrawing of the map.

How Tripura is governed

Article 168 lists the states whose legislatures have two Houses, and Tripura is not among them, so the Legislative Assembly is the whole legislature. The 1971 Act fixed it at 60 seats, 6 reserved for Scheduled Castes and 19 for Scheduled Tribes, the groups the Constitution lists for reserved representation. The 2008 delimitation order, as the Election Commission’s press note for the 2023 election records, reserves 10 and 20.

Article 332(3B) is a rule written for Tripura alone. The 72nd Amendment inserted it with effect from 5 December 1992. Until seats are readjusted on the first census after 2026, it says, the Scheduled Tribe seats must be at least the same share of the Assembly that tribal members held on that date. Scheduled Tribes were 31.8 per cent of the population in 2011, and 20 of 60 seats is one third, by tuput’s arithmetic.

The 2023 election was held on 16 February and counted on 2 March. The roll listed 28,23,822 electors, service voters included. The previous term had run from 23 March 2018 to 22 March 2023, and Article 172(1) gives each Assembly five years from its first meeting, which puts the next election in 2028.

Tripura has two Lok Sabha seats, and one of them is reserved for Scheduled Tribes, the Ministry of External Affairs’ table of the 2008 delimitation shows. Our explainer on how Lok Sabha seats are shared explains why these numbers are frozen.

The State Level Bankers’ Committee lists eight districts (North Tripura, Unakoti, Gomati, South Tripura, West Tripura, Sepahijala, Khowai and Dhalai), 23 sub-divisions and 58 blocks, with Agartala as the capital. After the panchayat elections of 27 July 2019 the state had 591 gram panchayats, 35 panchayat samitis and 8 zilla parishads (village, block and district bodies).

The High Court of Tripura began work on 23 March 2013 under a 2012 amendment to the 1971 Act. Before that a bench of the Gauhati High Court had sat in the state from 24 January 1972.

A tribal council over most of the state

Article 244(2) applies the Sixth Schedule to the tribal areas of Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram. Tripura joined that list on 1 April 1985 under the 49th Amendment. The Schedule’s table names a Tripura Tribal Areas District, defined by the Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council Act, 1979, and a council may have up to 30 members, no more than four of them nominated by the Governor. Our explainer on the Fifth and Sixth Schedules sets out what such councils can do. In Tripura, paragraph 12AA means a state Act on a subject within the council’s powers does not apply in its area unless the council directs.

IANS reported in December 2021 that the council had 28 elected seats and jurisdiction over more than two thirds of the state, with over 12,16,000 residents. The council’s chairman told the agency that the tribal share of those residents had fallen from 88 per cent in 1985 to 84 per cent. The 2026-27 state budget sets aside Rs 220 crore for grants to local bodies in the tribal district councils, PRS reports.

On 2 March 2024 the Government of India, the Government of Tripura and TIPRA Motha, a regional party, signed a tripartite agreement in New Delhi. The Press Information Bureau says it covers the issues of indigenous people relating to history, land and political rights, economic development, identity, culture and language, and provides for a joint working group. The IANS report records that the party had demanded a “Greater Tipraland”, a larger territory for tribal communities, from 2019, and that the demand raised doubts and fears among the state’s other communities. That summary does not use the phrase.

Two other agreements with the Home Ministry followed years of unrest. About 30,000 Bru-Reang people left Mizoram in 1997 and sheltered in camps in North Tripura, and the agreement of 16 January 2020 provides for settling around 34,000 in Tripura with a package of about Rs 600 crore. The memorandum of 4 September 2024 with two armed groups, the NLFT and ATTF, carries a Rs 250 crore package, and the Home Minister said it ended a 35-year conflict.

What the economy earns

PRS, using MoSPI data, puts the state’s real GSDP (gross state domestic product, the value of what the state produces) growth at 8.7 per cent in 2024-25. Agriculture, manufacturing and services made up 48, 9 and 43 per cent of the economy at current prices. Per capita GSDP was Rs 2,13,376, up 12 per cent on 2023-24, against Rs 2,34,859 for India, which is about 9 per cent lower by tuput’s arithmetic. The bankers’ committee says more than 44 per cent of the workforce depends on agriculture and only about 26 per cent of the land can be cultivated.

The budget presented on 16 March 2026 puts spending, excluding debt repayment, at Rs 33,668 crore for 2026-27 and receipts at Rs 26,916 crore, with a revenue surplus of Rs 1,616 crore and a fiscal deficit of Rs 6,752 crore. Of Rs 26,882 crore in revenue receipts, Rs 4,470 crore (17 per cent) is the state’s own and Rs 22,412 crore (83 per cent) comes from the Centre, as Rs 11,850 crore of central taxes and Rs 10,562 crore of grants. Salaries, pensions and interest take 54 per cent of revenue receipts.

Rubber is the state’s most important cash crop, the backgrounder says. The Forest Department introduced it in 1963, and Tripura is now the second-largest producer after Kerala with about 9 per cent of national output. The bankers’ committee gives 1,02,989 tonnes from 97,172 hectares in 2022-23. The committee says gas-fired plants generate 97.56 per cent of the state’s power, among them ONGC’s 726.6 MW plant at Palatana.

What sets Tripura apart

Bangladesh lies to the south, west and north, so the state’s links to the rest of India run along a 53 km boundary with Assam and a 109 km boundary with Mizoram. The backgrounder names National Highway 8, which runs through Cachar in Assam and Meghalaya to Guwahati, as the road connection. The PIB’s 2025 factsheet says the 152 km Badarpur to Agartala line was converted to broad gauge in April 2016, the 112 km Agartala to Sabroom line followed in phases from 2016 to 2019, and the whole network is electrified.

Two crossings face Bangladesh. The Maitri Setu over the Feni river was inaugurated on 9 March 2021, and the backgrounder says it connects Tripura with Chittagong port. The Akhaura to Agartala rail link is 12.24 km long, 5.46 km of it in Tripura and 6.78 km in Bangladesh, and the PIB said on 31 October 2023 that the two prime ministers would inaugurate it by video on 1 November. tuput found no published date for passenger trains on it.

In Unakoti district, about 8 km from Kailashahar and 185 km from Agartala, rock reliefs cover a hillside. India’s submission to UNESCO’s tentative World Heritage list ascribes them on stylistic grounds to the 8th and 9th centuries CE, before Manikya rule, and describes a Shiva figure about 30 feet high. The entry says Unakoti means “one less than a crore” in Bengali, and that the site’s tradition holds that gods who gathered there failed to rise before sunrise and Shiva turned them to stone. The site is on the tentative list and is not yet inscribed.

Literacy for people aged 7 and above was 87.22 per cent in 2011, up from 73.20 per cent in 2001, with 91.5 per cent for men and 82.7 per cent for women, the bankers’ committee says, citing the Census. Scheduled Tribe literacy rose from 56.5 to 79.05 per cent in that decade. The population grew from 6.46 lakh in 1951 to 36.74 lakh in 2011, and the Scheduled Tribe count from 2.37 lakh to 11.67 lakh.

What comes next

The Census 2027 house listing ran from 1 April to 30 September 2026, and the count’s reference date is 00:00 hours on 1 March 2027, the PIB says. Its figures will replace the 2011 numbers above and bear on the readjustment that Article 332(3B) waits for.

UNI reported on 6 September 2026 that a meeting in Delhi on 4 September resolved to begin implementing the 2024 agreement within two months, after two years of delay. The Union Home Minister chaired it, with the Chief Minister of Tripura and the TIPRA Motha chief present. The PIB’s 2025 factsheet says doubling of the rail line up to Agartala is planned, and the Assembly chosen in 2023 serves until 2028.