PESA Act, 1996: Extending Panchayati Raj to Scheduled Areas

Deep in the forested hills of central India, where tribal communities make up about 8.6% of the population, a quiet legislative revolution began in 1996. Most people have heard of the 73rd Amendment and its promise of grassroots democracy through Panchayati Raj. Fewer know that this landmark amendment initially left out millions of Adivasis living in the country’s Scheduled Areas. To bridge that gap, Parliament enacted a special law: the Provisions of the Panchayats (Extension to the Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996, better known as the PESA Act. Often called a “Constitution within the Constitution,” PESA was designed to hand tribal communities real authority over their villages, forests, waters, and way of life.

Why PESA was needed in the first place 🔗

The 73rd Constitutional Amendment Act, 1992, created a uniform three-tier Panchayati Raj system across rural India. But there was a catch. Article 243M of the Constitution explicitly excluded the Fifth and Sixth Schedule Areas from the operation of Part IX, which contained the Panchayat provisions. The framers recognised that tribal regions had their own customs, traditional governance systems, and community resource practices that a standardised law might inadvertently disrupt.

This exclusion, however, created a governance vacuum in areas that desperately needed empowered local institutions. Tribal communities in Scheduled Areas had long suffered from colonial-era forest laws, rampant land acquisition, and displacement due to development projects, which had eroded their access to forests, water bodies, and community lands. Without local self-government, decisions about their resources were being made by distant bureaucracies that rarely understood their needs.

The Bhuria Committee and the birth of PESA 🔗

To close this gap, the central government constituted a 22-member expert committee in 1994 under the chairmanship of Dilip Singh Bhuria, a parliamentarian from Madhya Pradesh, which highlighted the plight of tribal communities and the exploitation they faced. The committee submitted its report in January 1995, recommending a three-tier Panchayati Raj structure adapted to the unique realities of tribal areas.

Acting on these recommendations, Parliament passed the PESA Act, which came into force on 24 December 1996. The law was, in essence, a carefully crafted compromise. It extended the spirit of the 73rd Amendment to Scheduled Areas while simultaneously protecting tribal traditions, customary laws, and community resource management practices.

Where PESA applies: the ten scheduled states 🔗

PESA is not a nationwide law. It applies only to the Fifth Schedule Areas in ten states: Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Rajasthan, and Telangana. These areas are identified by the President under Article 244(1) of the Constitution, based on criteria such as a predominantly tribal population, compactness of the region, economic backwardness, and comparative under-development.

The Sixth Schedule, by contrast, governs tribal areas in Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura, and Mizoram through autonomous district and regional councils, which is why PESA does not extend to the Northeast.

Key provisions of the Act 🔗

PESA is a compact law, but its provisions are sweeping in their implications for local democracy. Understanding these provisions is crucial for grasping why the Act is so often described as transformative on paper.

The Gram Sabha as the heart of governance 🔗

Unlike the general Panchayati Raj system, where elected Panchayats typically dominate decision-making, PESA makes the Gram Sabha the supreme body in Scheduled Areas. The Act conferred absolute powers on the Gram Sabha, while the state legislature was given only an advisory role to ensure the proper functioning of Panchayats and Gram Sabhas. Crucially, the power delegated to the Gram Sabha cannot be curtailed by any higher tier.

The Gram Sabha under PESA is responsible for safeguarding traditions and customs, protecting cultural identity, managing community resources, approving development plans, identifying beneficiaries for poverty alleviation programmes, and certifying the proper utilisation of funds. This is a radical departure from the conventional model where the Gram Sabha plays a largely consultative role.

Reservations for Scheduled Tribes 🔗

PESA builds strong safeguards for political representation. The Act mandates that reservation of seats at every Panchayat shall be in proportion to the population of the communities for whom reservation is sought, that the chairperson at every level shall belong to the Scheduled Tribe, and that total reservation for Scheduled Tribes shall not be less than one-half of the total number of seats.

For Panchayats at the intermediate or district level that lack Scheduled Tribe representation, the state government may nominate members from Scheduled Tribes. However, this nomination cannot exceed one-tenth of the total elected members in that Panchayat, preserving the democratic character of the body.

Control over natural resources 🔗

This is perhaps the most radical aspect of PESA. The Act empowers Gram Sabhas and Panchayats to exercise authority over a wide range of resources. Gram Sabhas are entrusted with authority over matters such as minor forest produce, minor water bodies, consultation in land acquisition, and control over money lending to Scheduled Tribes.

Specifically, Gram Sabhas or Panchayats at the appropriate level must be consulted before land is acquired in Scheduled Areas for development projects and before displaced persons are resettled. They have ownership rights over minor forest produce, the power to regulate or prohibit intoxicants, and the authority to prevent land alienation and restore unlawfully alienated tribal land.

Respect for customs and traditions 🔗

PESA is unique in that it mandates state legislation on Panchayats in Scheduled Areas to be in harmony with customary law, social and religious practices, and traditional modes of community resource management. A village under PESA need not correspond to administrative boundaries; it may consist of a habitation or group of habitations, or a hamlet or group of hamlets comprising a community managing its affairs in accordance with traditions and customs.

The constitutional architecture behind PESA 🔗

To appreciate the legal weight of the Act, it helps to understand the constitutional scaffolding supporting it. PESA operationalizes Article 243M(4)(b), extending the provisions of Part IX (Panchayati Raj) to the Fifth Schedule Areas with specific modifications. The Fifth Schedule itself grants the Governors of these ten states extraordinary powers in matters concerning the administration of Scheduled Areas, including the ability to direct that specific laws shall not apply or shall apply with modifications.

Section 5 of PESA contained a transitional safeguard: any state law relating to Panchayats in Scheduled Areas that was inconsistent with PESA would continue to remain in force only until the competent state legislature amended or repealed it, or until one year from the date PESA received presidential assent.

The state conformity legislation 🔗

PESA cannot function in isolation. It requires state governments to amend their respective Panchayati Raj Acts and frame subordinate PESA Rules to make the provisions operational on the ground. All ten Fifth Schedule states have enacted the necessary compliance legislation by amending their respective Panchayati Raj Acts, but the framing of detailed PESA Rules has been uneven.

As per the latest official position from the Ministry of Panchayati Raj, eight of the ten states with tribal Scheduled Areas have framed their PESA rules, while Odisha and Jharkhand have created draft rules. This rules-level gap has been a major bottleneck in realising the Act’s promise.

The gap between promise and practice 🔗

Despite its pioneering design, PESA is widely regarded as one of India’s most under-implemented laws. Three decades on, the experience on the ground remains patchy at best.

Bureaucratic and political resistance 🔗

Experts point to a cocktail of reasons for PESA’s underperformance. Many experts have asserted that PESA did not deliver due to lack of clarity, legal infirmity, bureaucratic apathy, absence of political will, and resistance to change in the hierarchy of power. The very officials and structures that were supposed to empower Gram Sabhas often saw the law as a threat to their authority.

“Consultation” versus “consent” 🔗

One of the sharpest critiques concerns the Act’s language on land acquisition. The term “consultation” in the Act is often misinterpreted by authorities to proceed with land acquisition even without the Gram Sabha’s explicit approval, as seen in the Vedanta-Niyamgiri case in Odisha where mining approvals were initially pushed citing consultation despite community opposition. Activists have long argued that “consultation” must be interpreted as “free, prior, and informed consent” to give the Act real teeth.

Conflicting state and central laws 🔗

Many state-level and central laws governing forests, mines, land acquisition, and excise are still not in consonance with PESA provisions, creating legal friction and loopholes. Without harmonisation, Gram Sabhas frequently find their decisions overridden by competing statutes.

Weak awareness and capacity 🔗

A persistent challenge is the limited awareness among tribal communities themselves. Many residents of Scheduled Areas are still unfamiliar with the rights the law grants them. Gram Sabha meetings, where they happen, are often irregular, poorly attended, and dominated by the Sarpanch or influential non-tribal actors rather than serving as genuine forums of deliberation.

Signs of progress and renewed push 🔗

Not all the news is bleak. In Maharashtra’s Gadchiroli district, which is a tribal-majority and Left-Wing Extremism-affected region, more than 100 Gram Sabhas have exercised their rights over bamboo for the first time and over 500 have exercised rights over tendu leaves, earning incomes ranging from ten lakh to eighty lakh rupees per Gram Sabha. These success stories demonstrate what PESA can deliver when genuinely operationalised.

The Ministry of Panchayati Raj has also rolled out several initiatives in recent years, including a dedicated PESA Gram Panchayat Development Plan portal, specialised training modules for elected representatives, and annual events like the PESA Mahotsav to build awareness and showcase success stories. A publication titled “PESA in Action: Stories of Strength and Self-Governance,” released in 2025, compiled forty success stories from across the Scheduled Areas.

Why PESA still matters 🔗

PESA is more than a technical extension of Panchayati Raj to tribal regions. It is a constitutional acknowledgment that genuine democracy in diverse societies cannot be achieved through one-size-fits-all frameworks. By weaving together customary governance with modern representative institutions, PESA attempts something ambitious: a development paradigm where tribal communities in Scheduled Areas were to decide by themselves the pace and priorities of their development.

The Act also intersects powerfully with subsequent legislation, most notably the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006. Together, these laws form a legal ecosystem designed to reverse centuries of dispossession and restore agency to India’s Adivasi communities.

Realising this vision, however, requires more than statute. It demands that “consultation” evolves into binding consent, that state laws are harmonised with PESA, that Gram Sabhas have real fiscal autonomy, and that bureaucratic structures learn to treat tribal self-governance as a constitutional asset rather than an inconvenience.

What do you think? If the PESA Act had been implemented in letter and spirit since 1996, how different might the development trajectory of Scheduled Areas look today? And should “consultation” with Gram Sabhas be legally upgraded to “prior informed consent” to truly honour the spirit of tribal self-rule?

References

1. https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2207293&reg=3&lang=1
2. https://cjp.org.in/pesa-act-origins-workings-and-challenges/
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PESA_Act
4. https://india.mongabay.com/2021/03/pesa-the-wait-for-reforms-on-the-ground-continues-even-after-25-years/
5. https://visionias.in/current-affairs/monthly-magazine/2026-01-28/polity-and-governance/panchayats-extension-to-scheduled-areas-act-1996
6. https://www.drishtiias.com/daily-news-analysis/panchayat-extension-to-scheduled-areas-pesa-act-1996
7. https://www.impriindia.com/insights/panchayat-extension-scheduled-area-act/
8. https://www.nextias.com/blog/pesa-act-1996/