Article 244 — Administration of Scheduled and Tribal Areas

Article 244 sits within Part X of the Constitution of India and establishes the framework for governing areas inhabited predominantly by Scheduled Tribes, recognising that ordinary administrative arrangements are inadequate for communities with distinct social structures, customary law, and economic vulnerability. The provision is brief but operates as a gateway: Article 244(1) directs that the Fifth Schedule shall apply to the administration and control of Scheduled Areas and Scheduled Tribes in any state other than Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura, and Mizoram, while Article 244(2) and Article 275(1) bring the Sixth Schedule into force for the tribal areas within those four Northeastern states. The bifurcation reflects deliberate choices by the Constituent Assembly, informed by the reports of the two sub-committees chaired by A. V. Thakkar (for areas other than Assam) and Gopinath Bordoloi (for the Assam tribal belt), whose differing diagnoses produced the asymmetric design adopted on 26 January 1950.

The Fifth Schedule mechanics begin with the President, who under paragraph 6 declares an area to be a Scheduled Area and may by order alter its boundaries. The Governor of each state with Scheduled Areas carries the operative powers under paragraph 5: by public notification the Governor may direct that any Act of Parliament or the state legislature shall not apply to a Scheduled Area, or shall apply subject to exceptions and modifications. The Governor may also frame regulations for the peace and good government of such areas, including regulations to prohibit or restrict the transfer of land by or among members of Scheduled Tribes, to regulate the allotment of land, and to control money-lending. Such regulations require the President's assent and may repeal or amend existing law. Paragraph 4 mandates that the Governor establish a Tribes Advisory Council of up to twenty members, three-quarters of whom are representatives of the Scheduled Tribes in the state legislative assembly, to advise on matters referred by the Governor.

The Sixth Schedule operates through a fundamentally different instrument: territorially autonomous self-government rather than executive protection. It constitutes Autonomous District Councils and Regional Councils, elected bodies of up to thirty members empowered to make laws on land, forests (other than reserved forests), shifting cultivation, village administration, inheritance, marriage, and social customs. These councils possess judicial powers to constitute village and district council courts trying cases between tribals, and fiscal powers to assess and collect land revenue, levy specified taxes, and license trades. The Governor retains powers to assent to council laws and to dissolve a council on the report of a commission. A reporting layer under paragraph 14 of the Fifth Schedule requires the Governor to submit annual reports to the President on the administration of Scheduled Areas, and empowers the Union to direct the state on their administration.

Ten states currently contain Fifth Schedule Scheduled Areas: Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, and Rajasthan. The Sixth Schedule presently covers ten autonomous councils, including the Bodoland Territorial Council, Karbi Anglong and Dima Hasao in Assam, the Khasi Hills, Jaintia Hills and Garo Hills councils in Meghalaya, the Chakma, Mara and Lai councils in Mizoram, and the Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council. The Bodoland Territorial Council was reconstituted following the Bodo Accord of 27 January 2020 signed in New Delhi between the Union Home Ministry, the Assam government, and Bodo factions. Demands to extend the Sixth Schedule to Ladakh, pressed by the Leh Apex Body and the Kargil Democratic Alliance since the abrogation of Article 370 in August 2019, remain unresolved as of 2024.

Article 244 must be distinguished from adjacent provisions. It differs from PESA, the Provisions of the Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996, which extends Part IX panchayat governance into Fifth Schedule areas and vests Gram Sabhas with powers over minor forest produce and consultation on land acquisition — PESA operates within the Fifth Schedule, not as a substitute for it. It is also separate from Article 244A, inserted by the Twenty-second Amendment in 1969, which permits Parliament to create an autonomous state within Assam. The Fifth Schedule's protective model contrasts sharply with the Sixth Schedule's devolutionary model, a distinction examined by the Bhuria Committee (1995) and the Virginius Xaxa Committee (2014).

Controversy centres on the dormancy of gubernatorial powers. The Tribes Advisory Council in several states meets infrequently, and Governors rarely exercise paragraph 5 powers to modify central laws affecting tribal land, a passivity criticised by the Xaxa Committee. The Supreme Court in Samatha v. State of Andhra Pradesh (1997) read Fifth Schedule protections to bar transfer of tribal land to private mining companies, though subsequent dilution attempts and the tension with the Forest Rights Act, 2006 and the Land Acquisition Act, 2013 continue to generate litigation. The non-extension of either schedule to substantial tribal populations in states like Kerala and West Bengal exposes a coverage gap.

For the working practitioner — whether a district collector administering an Integrated Tribal Development Agency, a desk officer in the Ministry of Tribal Affairs, or an UPSC aspirant mapping GS Paper 2 federalism — Article 244 is the constitutional anchor for understanding India's asymmetric tribal governance. Mastery requires holding two parallel systems in mind simultaneously: the executive-protective Fifth Schedule and the legislatively-autonomous Sixth Schedule, each with distinct actors, instruments, and geographies, and each shaping contemporary debates over resource rights, displacement, and self-determination.