The story so far:

The centrally administered Union Territory of Andaman and Nicobar Islands is planning to introduce elections, as they are conducted in the rest of India, to the Nicobarese tribal community’s system of self-governance in the archipelago. This includes measures such as the delimitation of constituencies, the preparation of electoral rolls, and the reservation of seats and leadership positions for women in the community’s tribal councils. This move has led to urgent discussions amongst existing tribal councils of the Nicobarese about how this might bureaucratise the governance they have been practising. Some have also suspected that it could be intended to have tribal councils that might be more favourable to the Union government’s interests there, especially in Great Nicobar, where the current Nicobarese leadership has been opposing the Centre’s ₹91,000 crore container port, airport, and tourist-townfield project.

What do the draft rules propose?

The draft Andaman and Nicobar Islands Tribal Councils (Preparation of Electoral Rolls and Conduct of Elections) Rules, 2026, was notified by the district administration on May 15 this year and prescribes the exact procedure and rules for conducting 5-yearly elections to the Village Councils and Tribal Councils. The draft rules provide for conducting elections, the structure of the new representative system, the manner in which seats and constituencies are to be delimited, the rules for candidature, nomination, and withdrawal, their duties and responsibilities, and the broader administrative set-up for conducting these elections.

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The proposed structure involves Nicobarese villagers electing five to nine Captains for each village and directly voting for the position of the Chief Captain of each Island Tribal Council. The First Captains of each village of a particular Island are to vote for the position of the Vice-Chief Captain of the Island Tribal Council, and this Island Tribal Council would include the Chief Captain, the Vice-Chief Captain, and all First Captains of the Island.

These draft rules have been notified under the Andaman and Nicobar Islands (Tribal Councils) Regulation, a Presidential regulation promulgated in 2009 with the specific intent to bring autonomous self-governance to the Nicobarese community. Even though this Regulation provided the statutory language to set up the Village Council and Tribal Council structure, a key feature of this Regulation gave the district administration (through the Deputy Commissioner and Assistant Commissioner) an absolute and unilateral veto over any decision of the councils, if they posed a threat of injury or “annoyance” to the public or might “lead to a breach of peace”.

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Since the 2009 Regulation was passed, there have been several attempts at notifying Draft Rules under it, the latest one in 2020. The past iterations of the draft have often been circulated among tribal council leaders, but the leadership has not been able to successfully communicate the essence of these rules and procedures to the community at large.

Even though the Nicobarese community has been participating in Lok Sabha elections, according to officials from the Office of the CEO, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, this would be the first time a system of constituency-wise representative leadership structure will be implemented for Nicobarese self-governance if the Draft Rules are finalised.

How do the Nicobarese tribal councils function today?

The Nicobarese community, a designated Scheduled Tribe with a total population of about 30,000 across the Nicobar group of Islands, is traditionally represented by Tribal Councils that have been established over the last five to six decades. Each group of inhabited islands in the Nicobar has its own Tribal Council. Under this Tribal Council structure lies the village leadership, which comprises three Captains per village, headed by the First Captain and assisted by the Second and Third Captains. Including the Tribal Council of Little and Great Nicobar, seven Tribal Councils represent the Nicobarese community in islands like Car Nicobar, Nancowry, Kamorta, Teressa, and others.

Since at least the mid-1970s, experts and scholars have observed that the Nicobarese have been picking village captains through adult franchise. The concept of captaincy as village leadership first emerged in the 16th Century, when the Nicobarese who would go on board passing ships of colonial empires to negotiate began calling themselves captains. The British colonists were, however, the first to start legitimising the Captaincy structure as representative leadership of the community for their own administrative advantage towards the end of the 19th Century.

This structure eventually developed into a supplement to the social structure of large joint families, often referred to as Tuhets, that could become a formal channel of communication with the government.

The idea of the tribal council, however, emerged only in the 1990s to facilitate and ease the community’s entry into Government developmental activities, specifically in relation to a Central government scheme of the time for poverty alleviation. Today, the Nicobar district says that the Village leadership and the tribal councils have become “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 are leaders currently chosen in Nicobarese communities?

Even though authorities in the Nicobar district administration have maintained that under the current system, village captains are usually elected every four years, Anthropologist and community leader Anstice Justin has told The Hindu that “there is actually not much documentation on how exactly the leadership of the existing tribal councils operate”.

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A senior leader of the Tribal Council in Great Nicobar Island explained that elections for Captains and Tribal Council chairperson are held whenever the community feels the need for it. This leader, who is also the First Captain of his village on Great Nicobar Island, elaborated, “For example, the last time I was elected Captain was maybe around 2-3 years ago. There is a tradition in our community to get together for a village meeting. All residents of the village are present at this meeting.”

The villagers then nominate names for the Captains of the village through popular consensus. These names are then put on 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 added that similarly, the Tribal Council on GNI has been choosing the Chairperson by popular consensus, but that it had been decades since there was an election to this position.

Villagers mostly think about candidates’ level of education, fluency in Hindi (the language of government officials), ‘‘foreign’’ trips (an indicator of exposure to the world outside the islands), and ‘‘smartness’’ (the ability to deal appropriately with officials and outsiders, according to R. Venkat Ramanujam, Simron Jit Singh & Arild Vatn (2012). What Ramanujam et. al. noted, however, was that even though the Captains and Council were elected, “decisions were taken after popular consultation, usually through community meetings, and the tribal council did not have unilateral decision-making powers. Consequently, the captains were neither seen as lawmakers nor as ‘‘leaders’’ balancing social and political concerns.”

Why are the proposed changes causing concern?

Tribal Council leaders who have spoken to The Hindu about the implications of the new Draft Rules said that the proposed structure is largely being seen as something that would disrupt their traditional ways of perceiving governance. The tribal council leader from Great Nicobar said, “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.”

Meanwhile, Mr. Justin has noted that there is a real chance that an attempt to notify the Rules has come now in light of the opposition the government is facing from the Tribal Council on GNI, even though he acknowledged that systemic problems of opacity have riddled the existing system of Tribal Councils and Village Captaincy. “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.

But experts like Mr. Justin, who have worked with the government on engaging with the indigenous communities of the A&NI, have doubted whether the entire Nicobarese community in the islands will have the time and resources to understand the Draft Rules as they have been notified, the context of the Regulation under which they will be implemented, and the implications of introducing such a system for their village-level governance.

The Tribal Welfare Department of the A&NI administration has said that it will wait till June 15 for suggestions and objections, after which a final version may be notified. While the Tribal Councils of Nicobar are yet to hand in a formal objection or suggestions, the Congress party in A&NI has already objected to them and called for their withdrawal, primarily citing the lack of recognition for the Tuhet system and the lack of consultation with the community before bringing this draft.