Coverage

States & Union Territories

Maintained dossiers on every Indian state and union territory — how each is governed, what its economy rests on, and where it sits in the federal settlement.

36 maintained dossiers, each carrying a timeline from 1947 or its founding, its sources tiered by provenance, and the questions readers ask about it answered on the page.

India is a Union of States under Article 1 of the Constitution, and legislative power is divided between the Union and the States by the three lists of the Seventh Schedule. What that division means on the ground differs sharply from unit to unit. A state with its own legislature and council of ministers is not governed the way a Union Territory run through an administrator appointed by the Centre is; the Sixth Schedule areas of the North East, with their autonomous district councils, are different again.

Each dossier tracks one unit: how it is constituted, what its economy rests on, how much of its budget arrives as transfers rather than as its own revenue, and the record since 1947 or since the unit was formed. Reorganisation is part of that record — several of these units did not exist in their present shape a generation ago.