The Union Territory of Andaman and Nicobar Islands, run directly by the Centre, is planning to bring elections, similar to how they work in the rest of India, into the Nicobarese tribal community’s system of self-governance. That means delimiting constituencies, preparing electoral rolls, and reserving seats and leadership positions for women on the community’s tribal councils.
The plan has triggered urgent discussions among the existing tribal councils, who worry it could turn their governance into something far more bureaucratic. Some also suspect the real goal is tribal councils that lean more favourably toward the Union government’s interests, especially in Great Nicobar, where the current Nicobarese leadership has been pushing back against the Centre’s ₹91,000 crore container port, airport, and tourist-town project.
What the Draft Rules Say
The district administration notified the draft Andaman and Nicobar Islands Tribal Councils (Preparation of Electoral Rolls and Conduct of Elections) Rules, 2026, on May 15 this year. The rules lay out the exact procedure for holding 5-yearly elections to Village Councils and Tribal Councils, covering everything from how elections will run and how the new representative system is structured, to how seats and constituencies get delimited, the process for candidature, nomination, and withdrawal, duties and responsibilities, and the wider administrative machinery behind it all.
Under the proposed system, villagers would elect five to nine Captains per village and vote directly for the Chief Captain of each Island Tribal Council. The First Captains from every village on a given island would then vote among themselves for Vice-Chief Captain. The resulting Island Tribal Council would be made up of the Chief Captain, the Vice-Chief Captain, and all the First Captains of that island.
The Legal Backdrop
These draft rules sit under the Andaman and Nicobar Islands (Tribal Councils) Regulation, a Presidential regulation from 2009 designed specifically to bring autonomous self-governance to the Nicobarese community. But even as that Regulation laid the legal groundwork for the Village Council and Tribal Council structure, it also handed the district administration, through the Deputy Commissioner and Assistant Commissioner, an absolute, unilateral veto over any council decision judged likely to cause injury or “annoyance” to the public, or to risk a “breach of peace.”
Since 2009, there have been several attempts to notify draft rules under this Regulation, most recently in 2020. Each time, the drafts have been circulated among tribal council leaders, but that leadership hasn’t managed to get the substance of the rules across to the wider community. And while the Nicobarese have long taken part in Lok Sabha elections, officials from the Office of the CEO, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, say this would be the first time a constituency-based representative structure has been applied to Nicobarese self-governance itself, if the draft rules go through.
How Tribal Councils Work Today
The Nicobarese are a designated Scheduled Tribe numbering around 30,000 people across the Nicobar group of islands, and they’ve been represented by Tribal Councils built up over the last five to six decades. Every group of inhabited islands has its own Tribal Council, and beneath that sits village-level leadership: three Captains per village, led by the First Captain and backed up by a Second and Third Captain. Counting the councils on Little and Great Nicobar, there are seven Tribal Councils in total, covering islands including Car Nicobar, Nancowry, Kamorta, and Teressa.
Where the Captaincy System Comes From
Scholars have noted since at least the mid-1970s that Nicobarese communities pick village captains through adult franchise. The idea of “captaincy” itself actually goes back to the 16th century, when Nicobarese who boarded passing colonial ships to negotiate started calling themselves captains.
It was the British, though, who first formalised the Captaincy structure as representative leadership, mainly for their own administrative convenience, toward the end of the 19th century. Over time, this became layered onto the existing social structure of large joint families, known as Tuhets, and served as a formal channel of communication with the government.
The tribal council itself is a much newer idea, only emerging in the 1990s to help the community engage with government development programmes, particularly a Central poverty-alleviation scheme running at the time. Today, the Nicobar district describes village leadership and the tribal councils as “the link between the Local Administration and the tribal people of the island… most of the developmental schemes are being implemented through them only.”
How Leaders Are Actually Chosen
District officials maintain that under the current system, village captains are typically elected every four years. But anthropologist and community leader Anstice Justin told The Hindu that “there is actually not much documentation on how exactly the leadership of the existing tribal councils operate.”
A senior Tribal Council leader from Great Nicobar Island, who is also First Captain of his village, explained that elections for Captains and the Tribal Council chairperson happen whenever the community feels they’re needed, not on a fixed schedule. “For example, the last time I was elected Captain was maybe around 2-3 years ago,” he said. “There is a tradition in our community to get together for a village meeting. All residents of the village are present at this meeting.”
From there, villagers nominate names by popular consensus, and those names go onto a ballot paper. “We make the ballot papers and print them out ourselves, we appoint a polling officer from among us to conduct the ballot, and the person with the most votes becomes First Captain,” he said. He added that the Tribal Council on Great Nicobar Island chooses its Chairperson the same way, by consensus, though it’s been decades since that position was last up for election.
What Villagers Value in a Leader
According to research by R. Venkat Ramanujam, Simron Jit Singh, and Arild Vatn (2012), villagers tend to weigh a candidate’s education, fluency in Hindi (the language of government officials), experience with “foreign” trips (seen as exposure to the outside world), and “smartness,” meaning the ability to deal capably with officials and outsiders.
The same researchers found that even though Captains and Council members were elected, “decisions were taken after popular consultation, usually through community meetings, and the tribal council did not have unilateral decision-making powers.” As a result, they wrote, captains were seen neither as lawmakers nor as “leaders” balancing social and political concerns.
Why the Changes Are Worrying Tribal Leaders
Tribal Council leaders who spoke to The Hindu about the new draft rules see the proposed structure as a threat to how they’ve traditionally understood governance. The Great Nicobar council leader put it this way: “We have been using this way of governing our villages for generations. We hold elections through consensus when needed, and our traditional ways of living are so well integrated into how we oversee the islands and villages. This looks like it will turn all of this into an office job that we will have to do in addition to the lives we live on the islands.”
Mr. Justin, meanwhile, has raised the possibility that the timing of this notification isn’t a coincidence, given the pushback the government has faced from the Great Nicobar Island Tribal Council, though he also acknowledged that the existing Tribal Council and Village Captaincy system has real problems with opacity. “For instance, in several Island Tribal Councils, it remains unclear when the Chairperson was last elected and what kind of authority they wield,” he said.
Can the Community Keep Up With the Process?
Experts like Mr. Justin, who has worked with the government on engaging Andaman and Nicobar’s indigenous communities, doubt whether the Nicobarese community as a whole will have the time or resources to properly understand the draft rules, the regulatory context behind them, or what a system like this would actually mean for village-level governance.
The Tribal Welfare Department of the A&NI administration says it will accept suggestions and objections until June 15, after which a final version of the rules may be notified. The Tribal Councils of Nicobar have not yet submitted a formal objection or suggestions, but the Congress party in A&NI has already objected and called for the rules to be withdrawn, pointing mainly to the lack of recognition for the Tuhet system and the absence of consultation with the community before the draft was introduced.
Key Takeaway: The proposed Andaman and Nicobar Islands Tribal Councils (Preparation of Electoral Rolls and Conduct of Elections) Rules, 2026 aim to introduce a formal, constituency-based electoral system into the Nicobarese community’s traditional self-governance framework established under the Andaman and Nicobar Islands (Tribal Councils) Regulation, 2009.
While the reforms seek to standardize elections, improve representation, and provide reservations for women, they have sparked concerns over increased bureaucratisation, inadequate consultation, and potential erosion of indigenous governance rooted in the Tuhet and Captaincy systems. For government exam aspirants, the issue highlights the intersection of tribal autonomy, constitutional governance, administrative reforms, and development in India’s Union Territories.
M.C.Q.
Question 1: The proposed Tribal Council Election Rules, 2026 for the Nicobarese community have been framed under which regulation?
- A. Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996
- B. Andaman and Nicobar Islands (Tribal Councils) Regulation, 2009
- C. Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers Act, 2006
- D. Sixth Schedule of the Constitution
Question 2: The Nicobarese community is officially recognized as:
- A. Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group (PVTG) only
- B. Scheduled Tribe (ST)
- C. Scheduled Caste (SC)
- D. Other Backward Class (OBC)
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