India Has About 24 Lakh Elected Panchayat Members, Nearly Half of Them Women, and 5,050 Urban Local Bodies, All Run Under Two Constitutional Amendments in Force Since 1993

On 24 April 2026 the Press Information Bureau put the scale of India’s panchayats, the elected councils of villages, at more than 2.5 lakh bodies with 24.04 lakh elected representatives, 49.75 per cent of them women. Ministry of Panchayati Raj’s note for the same day says more than 12 lakh women govern panchayats and that 21 States and 2 Union Territories reserve 50 per cent of seats for women.

Towns have their own count. In October 2026 the Local Government Directory, which the Ministry of Panchayati Raj runs, listed 5,050 urban local bodies, including 276 municipal corporations, 2,006 municipalities and 2,416 town panchayats. Both systems rest on two amendments to the Constitution. The Seventy-third Amendment Act, 1992 came into force on 24 April 1993 and added Part IX, The Panchayats. Its twin, the Seventy-fourth, came into force on 1 June 1993 and added Part IXA, The Municipalities.

How a Directive Principle became a constitutional tier

Article 40, in the Directive Principles of Part IV, told the State to “organise village panchayats” and give them enough power to work as units of self-government. It left the design open. According to the Ministry’s annual report, the Balwantrai Mehta team’s 1957 report asked for statutory representative bodies, that the National Development Council endorsed the principle and left each State to work out its own structure, and that Rajasthan first put the system in place on 2 October 1959 at Nagaur.

In 1978 the Ashoka Mehta Committee recommended that Panchayati Raj be written into the Constitution. West Bengal, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh then reworked their own systems. Fresh amendment bills came in 1991, a Joint Select Committee of Parliament revised them, and the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha passed them on 22 and 23 December 1992. More than half of the State Assemblies ratified them before the President gave assent. 24 April is now observed as National Panchayati Raj Day.

Three tiers, a village assembly and a five-year clock

Every State must have panchayats at the village, intermediate (block) and district levels, says Article 243B. A State with a population of 20 lakh or fewer may skip the intermediate tier. Beneath them sits the gram sabha, which Article 243 defines as everyone registered on the electoral roll of a village, and which exercises whatever powers its State’s law gives it. Ministry advice to States is to hold between 6 and 12 gram sabhas a year.

The Local Government Directory counted 675 district panchayats, 6,769 block panchayats and 255,396 village panchayats. Basic Statistics 2025, the Ministry’s compendium, puts the average village panchayat at 4,659 people. Under Article 243C every seat is filled by direct election from a territorial constituency. A village panchayat’s chairperson is chosen as State law provides, while block and district chairpersons are elected by and from the elected members.

Terms run five years from the first meeting, under Article 243E. An election must be completed before the term ends, or within six months of an early dissolution. Under Article 243K the roll and the polls belong to a State Election Commission, headed by a State Election Commissioner whom the Governor appoints and who can be removed only as a High Court judge can. That body is separate from the Election Commission of India, which runs Parliament and Assembly elections.

Part IX does not apply everywhere. Nagaland, Meghalaya and Mizoram, the hill areas of Manipur with District Councils, and the Scheduled and tribal areas of Article 244 stand outside Part IX under Article 243M. Parliament extended Part IX to Fifth Schedule areas, with changes, through the Panchayats (Extension to the Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996, and the Ministry lists such areas in 10 States. The directory also lists 14,163 traditional local bodies.

Reserved seats and what the numbers show

Panchayat seats are reserved under Article 243D for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in proportion to their population in the area. Not less than one-third of those seats go to women of those groups. Not less than one-third of all directly elected seats go to women, rotated among constituencies. Not less than one-third of chairperson posts at each level are reserved for women, also by rotation. Clause 6 lets a State reserve seats and offices for backward classes if it chooses.

Basic Statistics 2025 gives 24,14,943 elected members of panchayats, of whom 11,69,896 (48.5 per cent) are women. State and Union Territory figures in its table, dated 31 March 2025, run from 40.77 per cent in Uttar Pradesh to 60.08 per cent in Assam. That document says many States have raised the reservation for women from one-third to 50 per cent. The Ministry’s note of April 2026 gives 49.75 per cent, from a count published later.

Two disputes have reached the Supreme Court. One is “proxy” leadership, where a male relative acts for an elected woman. On 6 July 2023 the Court passed an order in Writ Petition (Civil) 615 of 2023, and the Ministry set up an Advisory Committee on the issues of women pradhans, the elected heads of village panchayats. That committee reported on 5 February 2025 and, according to the annual report, the Ministry accepted its recommendations.

Backward-class quotas under Article 243D(6) are the other. In Vikas Kishanrao Gawali v. State of Maharashtra (2021) the Court laid out three steps. A State must set up a dedicated commission to study backwardness local body by local body. It must fix the share for each body on that commission’s findings. And the total of SC, ST and backward-class seats must not exceed 50 per cent. Maharashtra’s 2021 ordinance allowed up to 27 per cent for backward classes uniformly across the State. It was challenged on this basis, and the Court’s order of 6 December 2021 records that the first step, setting up the commission, had not been taken.

Towns and cities under the 74th Amendment

Article 243Q creates a Nagar Panchayat for an area changing from rural to urban, a Municipal Council for a smaller urban area and a Municipal Corporation for a larger one. Which area is which is for the Governor to decide, by notification, using population, density, revenue, the share of non-farm jobs and similar factors. Seats are filled by direct election from wards. State law may add nominated people with municipal expertise, who cannot vote, and may add MPs and MLAs of the area, and it decides how the chairperson, in a city the mayor, is chosen.

A municipality with a population of three lakh or more must have Wards Committees under Article 243S. Article 243T mirrors the panchayat rules on seats: reservation for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in proportion to population, and not less than one-third of seats for women. Chairperson posts are reserved for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and women in the manner State law provides. Municipal terms follow the same five-year and six-month rule under Article 243U.

Two planning bodies join the rural and urban sides. A District Planning Committee in every district, required by Article 243ZD, consolidates the plans of panchayats and municipalities into one draft plan. At least four-fifths of its members are elected by and from the elected members of the district panchayat and the municipalities, in proportion to the rural and urban population. A Metropolitan Planning Committee, under Article 243ZE, covers an area of 10 lakh people or more, and at least two-thirds of its members are elected from municipalities and panchayat chairpersons.

What they may do, and who pays

A State legislature may give these bodies the powers to prepare plans and carry out schemes, say Articles 243G and 243W. The Eleventh and Twelfth Schedules list 29 rural and 18 urban subjects as guidance. The word is “may”, and local government is Entry 5 of the State List in the Seventh Schedule, the list of subjects only State legislatures can make laws on. That division of powers between the Union and States therefore decides how much passes down.

In its annual report the Ministry says “Panchayat is a State subject” and describes a Devolution Index that scores States on six dimensions. In the Ministry’s report of February 2025 Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu ranked first, second and third. A study by the Indian Institute of Public Administration found the devolution score rising from 39.9 per cent to 43.9 per cent between 2013-14 and 2021-22.

Money follows the same split. State law can assign taxes and grants to local bodies under Articles 243H and 243X. Articles 243I and 243Y also require the Governor to set up a State Finance Commission every fifth year to recommend how the State’s tax proceeds are shared with local bodies. A Reserve Bank study of 2.58 lakh panchayats for 2020-21 to 2022-23 found that around 95 per cent of their revenue is grants from higher levels of government, and it said delays in constituting State Finance Commissions hamper their spending. Its November 2024 report on 232 municipal corporations, more than 90 per cent of the total, found their revenue accounts in surplus but their reliance on transfers continuing.

Union money arrives through the Finance Commission, covered in the Finance Commission explainer. Its Explanatory Memorandum of February 2026 records grants of Rs 7,91,493 crore for rural and urban local bodies for 2026-27 to 2030-31. Ministry of Panchayati Raj figures put the rural share at Rs 4.35 lakh crore, 84 per cent above the previous Commission’s.

When the clock slips

Terms are set by the Constitution, and the Supreme Court has held States to them. On 10 May 2022, in Suresh Mahajan v. State of Madhya Pradesh, a bench of Justices A.M. Khanwilkar, Abhay S. Oka and C.T. Ravikumar recorded that 23,263 local bodies in that State had no elected representatives for over two years. It wrote that “This constitutional mandate is inviolable” and ordered elections to go ahead without backward-class seats until the three steps were done. It added that the order applied to all States and Union Territories.

A gap shows in the Ministry’s own table, dated 31 March 2025. It records no elected panchayats in Manipur (dissolved October 2022), Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh (December 2023) and Puducherry (July 2011), each with a note that elections had not been held.

From 2026-27 the Sixteenth Finance Commission’s local body grants carry three entry conditions for each State: duly constituted bodies as Parts IX and IXA require, provisional and audited accounts of all local bodies online, and a State Finance Commission constituted every five years with its action-taken report laid before the Legislature within six months.