Status of Sixth Schedule Areas

Design

Paragraphs of the Sixth Schedule allow councils to make laws on land, forest (other than reserved forest), shifting cultivation, village administration, marriage and social custom, inheritance, and some local taxes, subject to the Governor. Councils have elected members and nominated seats. They run local courts for specified disputes. Article 244(2) is the hook. This is not the Fifth Schedule, which uses Tribes Advisory Councils and the Governor’s regulations, and which PESA later tried to democratise.

Meghalaya’s whole state is under Sixth Schedule councils (Khasi, Jaintia, Garo). Assam has several ADCs (including Karbi Anglong, Dima Hasao, and the Bodoland Territorial Region after successive accords). Mizoram and Tripura have councils for Chakma, Lai, Mara, and Tripura tribal areas.

Present status

Councils have protected land alienation rules better than many Fifth Schedule districts. They have also been captured by local elites, accused of excluding women and smaller minorities (Bru/Reang, non-Bodo in BTR, non-Khasi in Shillong). Funds and state departments often bypass them. Inner Line and Sixth Schedule together structure the North-East’s ethnic federalism.

Demands to extend Sixth Schedule — Ladakh after 2019, some Gorkha and hill groups, parts of Arunachal and Manipur hills — show that the Schedule is now a political brand of autonomy. Parliament can amend the Schedule; it has not become a general tribal law for all India. Status today: constitutionally robust in four states, socially contested, fiscally dependent, and politically attractive to regions that lack it.