Today’s Current Affairs explainer ended on a festival whose closing ritual is a meeting: at the Muria Darbar in Bastar, village headmen sit down with the administration. Bastar is a Scheduled Area, and the Constitution has its own answer to the same question. This capsule is that answer.
Explained in plain language for SSC, RRB NTPC, banking exams, State PSC and UPSC Prelims.
The Hinge: India Has Two Tribal Constitutions, Not One
Most notes treat tribal administration as a single topic. The Constitution treats it as two, and puts them in two different schedules under two halves of the same Article.
| Fifth Schedule | Sixth Schedule | |
|---|---|---|
| Article | 244(1) | 244(2) |
| Where it applies | Ten States with notified Scheduled Areas | Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram |
| Who runs the area | The State, with the Governor given special powers | Autonomous District and Regional Councils with their own law-making powers |
| The tribal body | A Tribes Advisory Council — it advises | A District Council — it legislates |
Read the last row slowly, because it is the whole difference. Under the Fifth Schedule the tribal body advises; under the Sixth it makes law. Same Article, same Constitution, two completely different amounts of power — and the site has met this shape before, in the capsule on Panchayati Raj, where a body can be given constitutional status without being given constitutional powers.
Who Decides What Is a Scheduled Area
The President declares an area to be a Scheduled Area, may cease that status, and may increase or reduce the area after consulting the Governor. So a Scheduled Area is created by an order, not by an Act, which is why the map can change without Parliament sitting.
And here is the trap: the Constitution nowhere states the criteria. The tests actually used come from administrative practice and from the work of the Dhebar Commission of 1960-61: a preponderance of tribal population, a reasonably compact and sizeable area, an administratively viable unit, and economic backwardness compared with neighbouring areas. The Census capsule said that a count decides how the country divides everything it has — and a criterion written as a share of population is the clearest possible example.
The Ten States
Scheduled Areas exist in ten States. Learn them as three groups and they stop being a list.
| Group | States |
|---|---|
| The central belt | Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha |
| The western and southern edge | Gujarat, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana |
| The one that surprises people | Himachal Pradesh |
A second trap, and a good one. A Tribes Advisory Council may also be set up on the President’s direction in a State that has Scheduled Tribes but no Scheduled Areas at all — and West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Uttarakhand have such Councils without having Scheduled Areas. So the list of States with Councils is longer than the list of States with Scheduled Areas.
What the Governor Can Actually Do
- Report to the President every year on the administration of the Scheduled Areas in the State.
- Direct that an Act of Parliament or of the State legislature shall not apply to a Scheduled Area, or shall apply only with specified exceptions and modifications.
- Make regulations, after consulting the Tribes Advisory Council, for the peace and good government of the area — in particular to restrict the transfer of land by or among Scheduled Tribes, to regulate the allotment of land to them, and to regulate money-lending to them.
That second power is extraordinary and students routinely miss it. A Governor can switch off a law Parliament has passed, for one part of one State. The capsule on the President and the Governor describes an office that is usually a formal one — this is the place where the Governor is not formal at all.
The three subjects named in the regulation power are the giveaway. Land transfer, land allotment and money-lending: the Constitution is naming the three ways tribal land was historically lost, and giving somebody the power to stop each of them. When a provision lists specific subjects, read the list as a description of what went wrong before.
PESA: the Law That Closed a Gap the 73rd Amendment Left Open
The 73rd Amendment created Part IX and gave panchayats constitutional status — and expressly did not apply it to Scheduled Areas. Article 243M keeps Part IX out of those areas and allows Parliament to extend it by law. That law is PESA.
| About PESA | Detail |
|---|---|
| Full name | The Provisions of the Panchayats (Extension to the Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996 |
| Act number | Act 40 of 1996, enacted 24 December 1996 |
| Where it applies | The Scheduled Areas of the ten States |
| What it empowers | The Gram Sabha, over customary resources, minor forest produce, minor minerals, minor water bodies, selection of beneficiaries, sanction of projects and control of local institutions |
| Land acquisition | The Gram Sabha must be consulted before land is acquired, and may act to prevent and restore illegal alienation of land |
And now the sentence that makes this capsule worth reading. Part IX says a State legislature may endow panchayats with powers — the permissive verb that the Panchayati Raj capsule built its whole argument on. PESA does not say may. For the powers in its section 4, the transfer is mandatory.
So the law written for the most marginal areas of the country is, on paper, stronger than the law written for everywhere else. That is the opposite of what almost anybody would guess, and it is exactly the kind of inversion an examiner enjoys.
What the Words Mean
| Term | In plain words |
|---|---|
| Scheduled Area | An area declared as such by the President, where special rules of administration apply |
| Scheduled Tribe | A community listed as such for a State by Presidential order |
| Tribes Advisory Council | A State-level body that advises the Governor on tribal welfare |
| Autonomous District Council | A Sixth Schedule body that can make law for its district |
| Gram Sabha | The assembly of all registered voters of a village |
| Alienation of land | Land passing out of the hands of those it belonged to |
Why a Reader Should Care
Because this is one of the highest-yield corners of the polity syllabus and one of the least read. The Constitution capsule lists the schedules; this one explains why two of them exist. The Fifth-versus-Sixth contrast, the ten States, the Governor’s power to disapply a law, and PESA’s mandatory verb are asked in SSC, State PSC and UPSC papers year after year.
And because it is the constitutional half of a very old question. At the Muria Darbar, the community assembles once a year and the administration comes to listen. Under the Fifth Schedule, a Council advises and a Governor reports. Under PESA, a Gram Sabha must be consulted before land is taken. Three different centuries, three different mechanisms, and all of them are attempts at the same thing: making sure somebody has to listen.
Practice Questions
Q1. The Fifth Schedule of the Constitution is linked to which Article?
(a) Article 243 (b) Article 244(1) (c) Article 244(2) (d) Article 275
Answer: (b) Article 244(1) One of the other options covers the Sixth Schedule instead, and the two halves of that Article are the commonest place to slip.
Q2. Scheduled Areas under the Fifth Schedule exist in how many States?
(a) Eight (b) Nine (c) Eleven (d) Ten
Answer: (d) Ten More States than that have Tribes Advisory Councils, because a Council may be set up even where no Scheduled Area has been notified.
Q3. Who declares an area to be a Scheduled Area?
(a) The President (b) The Governor (c) Parliament (d) The State legislature
Answer: (a) The President It is done by order rather than by statute, which is why the map can be changed without a law being passed.
Q4. The Sixth Schedule applies to which States?
(a) Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha and Madhya Pradesh (b) Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram (c) Nagaland, Manipur, Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh (d) Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Maharashtra
Answer: (b) Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram Autonomous District Councils in those four States can make law, which is what separates that schedule from the Fifth.
Q5. Under PESA, the Gram Sabha must be consulted before
(a) A panchayat election is held (b) A new district is created (c) Land is acquired in a Scheduled Area (d) A State budget is passed
Answer: (c) Land is acquired in a Scheduled Area The same Act also lets the Gram Sabha act against land that has been alienated illegally, which is the provision it is most often tested on.
