State / UT
Andaman and Nicobar Islands
The Andaman and Nicobar Islands is a Union Territory of India, constituted on 1 November 1956 under the States Reorganisation Act, comprising an archipelago in the Bay of Bengal administered directly by the Union through a Lieutenant Governor. It had 380,581 residents at the 2011 Census — among the smallest populations of any Indian territory — organised into three districts and sending a single member to the Lok Sabha. Unlike Delhi or Puducherry, it has no legislative assembly and no council of ministers: there is no Chief Minister, and executive authority rests with the Union's appointee rather than an elected territorial government. Its distinctive weight in the Republic is strategic rather than demographic — it hosts India's tri-service Andaman and Nicobar Command, and its southern islands are the site of the Union's largest greenfield infrastructure programme, the Great Nicobar development plan.
Updated
- Capital
- Sri Vijaya Puram (renamed from Port Blair, 13 September 2024)
- Formed
- 1 November 1956, as a Union Territory under the States Reorganisation Act
- Legislature
- None — no legislative assembly; administered by a Lieutenant Governor appointed by the President
- Lok Sabha seats
- 1 (Andaman and Nicobar Islands, general/unreserved; 315,148 electors at the 2024 general election)
- Population (2011 Census)
- 380,581
- Districts
- 3 — North and Middle Andaman, South Andaman, Nicobar
Role
The Andaman and Nicobar Islands occupies the most centralised position available in the Indian federal structure. It is a Union Territory without a legislature: there is no assembly, no council of ministers and no Chief Minister, and executive power is exercised by a Lieutenant Governor appointed by the President and working through the Ministry of Home Affairs. Where a state government negotiates with the Centre over the State List, the Andaman and Nicobar Administration is the Centre, locally instantiated. Democratic representation in the territory runs through two narrow channels — a single Lok Sabha seat, contested by about 315,000 electors in 2024, and elected local bodies including the municipal council in the capital and the panchayats. Its ~380,581 residents at the 2011 Census and its small economy mean the territory’s leverage in the Union is not electoral or fiscal; it has one vote in a 543-member house and no budget of its own to bargain with. It has neither the asymmetric autonomy of an Article 371 state nor the partial self-government of Delhi or Puducherry.
What the territory does weigh is geography and jurisdiction. The archipelago carries Indian sovereignty and an exclusive economic zone hundreds of kilometres into the eastern Bay of Bengal, near the approaches to the Malacca Strait, and since 2001 it has hosted India’s integrated tri-service command — a defence institution seated in a territory with no legislature to scrutinise it. That combination has made the islands an instrument of Union policy rather than a subject of it, most visibly in the Great Nicobar holistic development plan: a NITI Aayog–originated programme for a transshipment port, airport, township and power plant, cleared in 2022 and moving into procurement by 2026 with a greenfield airport approved in June that year. The plan is contested precisely along the territory’s structural fault line. Great Nicobar is roughly 92% tribal reserve, home to about 1,761 Shompen and Nicobarese people, and the objections raised — by scholars, ecologists and rights groups — are pressed through courts, committees and the press rather than through a territorial legislature, because no such legislature exists. The 2004 tsunami, which subsided the islands by about a metre and destroyed much of the Nicobar settlement pattern, remains the reference point against which any development at that latitude is argued. Renaming — three islands in 2018, the capital as Sri Vijaya Puram in 2024 — has run in parallel, an assertion of national narrative over a territory that was, in an earlier era, chiefly a penal colony.
Desk maintained by IndiaStand editorial cycles. Officeholders are transient; this dossier tracks the institution.
Timeline since 1947
- reference
Constituted as a Union Territory
The archipelago became a Union Territory under the States Reorganisation Act, administered directly by the Union rather than folded into a neighbouring state — the arrangement that still governs it.
- reference
Andaman and Nicobar Command raised
India's integrated tri-services command was established in the territory, headquartered in the capital. It gave the islands a defence-institutional weight out of proportion to their population and placed a joint military structure alongside the civil administration.
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Indian Ocean tsunami strikes the Nicobar group
The undersea earthquake and tsunami devastated the southern islands. Reported geophysical effects include the archipelago shifting roughly 1.25 m south-west and subsiding by about 1 m — land loss that reshaped settlement and reconstruction policy in the Nicobars.
- reference
Three islands renamed
Ross Island was renamed Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose Dweep, Havelock Island became Swaraj Dweep and Neil Island became Shaheed Dweep — the start of a sustained programme of replacing colonial-era toponyms in the territory.
- reference
Great Nicobar development plan receives environmental clearance
The Union environment ministry cleared the Great Nicobar holistic development project — an international container transshipment port at Galathea Bay, an airport, a township and a power plant — conceived by NITI Aayog with the Andaman and Nicobar Islands Integrated Development Corporation as nodal agency. Reported cost figures range from ₹75,000 crore (2022) to about ₹81,000 crore (2025); reporting at clearance put tree felling at roughly 8.5 lakh, later government estimates at about 964,000.
- reference
Tribal-rights clearance for the Great Nicobar project contested
Approvals covering tribal land and forest rights on Great Nicobar drew sustained objection. About 853 sq km of the island — some 92% — is tribal reserve, and roughly 1,761 Shompen and Nicobarese people live there; project reporting puts forest land affected at about 130.75 sq km within a 166.10 sq km project area. In February 2024, 39 genocide scholars publicly warned that the plan endangered the Shompen. The Union government has rejected the characterisation.
- official
Port Blair renamed Sri Vijaya Puram
The capital was renamed by the Union government, which stated the change was intended to remove a colonial imprint. The name also carries a claimed historical association with the Srivijaya maritime realm.
- reference
Seven deep-sea mining blocks approved off Great Nicobar
The Union approved seven deep-sea mining blocks in waters off Great Nicobar, extending the territory's role from a strategic and logistics platform to an offshore resource frontier.
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Greenfield airport cleared for Great Nicobar
The Union cleared a new greenfield airport for Great Nicobar reported at about ₹13,000 crore, in place of an expansion of the existing naval air station — the largest single civil-aviation commitment in the territory's history and a marker that the development plan has moved from clearance to procurement.
Frequently asked
- What is Andaman and Nicobar Islands?
- The Andaman and Nicobar Islands is a Union Territory of India, constituted on 1 November 1956 under the States Reorganisation Act, comprising an archipelago in the Bay of Bengal administered directly by the Union through a Lieutenant Governor. It had 380,581 residents at the 2011 Census — among the smallest populations of any Indian territory — organised into three districts and sending a single member to the Lok Sabha. Unlike Delhi or Puducherry, it has no legislative assembly and no council of ministers: there is no Chief Minister, and executive authority rests with the Union's appointee rather than an elected territorial government. Its distinctive weight in the Republic is strategic rather than demographic — it hosts India's tri-service Andaman and Nicobar Command, and its southern islands are the site of the Union's largest greenfield infrastructure programme, the Great Nicobar development plan.
- When was Andaman and Nicobar Islands established?
- Andaman and Nicobar Islands was established 1956-11-01.
- What does Andaman and Nicobar Islands do?
- Its remit covers Union Territory administration under the Lieutenant Governor: law and order, land, revenue, health, education, and local government are run by the Andaman and Nicobar Administration rather than an elected state government, Tribal reserve administration: large parts of the Nicobar group and parts of the Andamans are protected reserves for particularly vulnerable tribal groups, restricting entry, settlement and land use, Directly Union-financed: the territory has no state budget voted by a legislature; its expenditure is carried on the Union Budget through the Ministry of Home Affairs, Strategic geography: the archipelago projects Indian jurisdiction and an exclusive economic zone deep into the eastern Bay of Bengal, close to the Malacca approaches.
- What is the latest on Andaman and Nicobar Islands?
- As of 2026-07-17: Greenfield airport cleared for Great Nicobar. The Union cleared a new greenfield airport for Great Nicobar reported at about ₹13,000 crore, in place of an expansion of the existing naval air station — the largest single civil-aviation commitment in the territory's history and a marker that the development plan has moved from clearance to procurement.
Official sources
The government's own pages for this institution — go straight to the primary.
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The territory's official government portal; departmental directories, orders and notifications.
www.andaman.gov.in/
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The Union ministry through which the territory is administered and financed.
www.mha.gov.in/en/divisionofmha/union-territories-division
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Electoral rolls and returns for the single Lok Sabha constituency.
ceoandaman.nic.in/
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Statistical reports for the Andaman and Nicobar Islands parliamentary constituency.
www.eci.gov.in/
- Census of India 2011 data
Population, district and settlement data for the territory.
censusindia.gov.in/