India's Eight Union Territories Hold 19 Lok Sabha Seats Between Them, Only Three Elect Their Own Assembly, and Each Is Run Under Its Own Mix of Articles 239, 239A, 239AA and 240

India has eight union territories, and three of them, Delhi, Puducherry and Jammu and Kashmir, elect their own legislative assembly. The Ministry of Home Affairs lists the other five as territories without legislatures. Together the eight hold 19 of the 543 seats in the Lok Sabha.

The Constitution gives them no single design. A five-judge Supreme Court bench ruled on 11 May 2023 that “There does not exist a homogeneous class of Union Territories with similar governance structures.” The sections below take each territory in turn, with the law behind it.

What Article 239 gives every union territory

Part VIII of the Constitution, Articles 239 to 241, covers the union territories, which sit outside the arrangement between the Centre and the states described in the article on India as a Union of States. Article 239(1) says each is administered by the President, acting through an administrator whom the President appoints and gives a title of the President’s choosing, unless Parliament provides otherwise by law. The title differs by territory. The Ministry of Home Affairs and the statutes below name a Lieutenant Governor in Delhi, Puducherry, Jammu and Kashmir, Ladakh and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, and an Administrator in Chandigarh, Lakshadweep and Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu.

Article 239(2) lets the President appoint the Governor of a state as administrator of a neighbouring territory, to act “independently of his Council of Ministers”. Three other provisions create the differences between territories:

• Article 239A, inserted by the Fourteenth Amendment (in force 28 December 1962), lets Parliament create a legislature, a council of ministers or both for Puducherry.
• Article 239AA, inserted by the Sixty-ninth Amendment (in force 1 February 1992), sets out Delhi’s arrangement in the Constitution itself.
• Article 240 lets the President make regulations for the “peace, progress and good government” of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Lakshadweep, Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu, and Puducherry, and such a regulation has the force of an Act of Parliament. For Puducherry it applies only while the assembly is dissolved or suspended.

Ladakh is not named in Article 240, but section 58(2) of the 2019 Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act gives the President the same power over it.

The eight at a glance

Delhi, Puducherry and Jammu and Kashmir elect assemblies under three different laws

Delhi’s rules are in the Constitution. Article 239AA named it the National Capital Territory of Delhi from 1 February 1992, made its administrator a Lieutenant Governor and created a directly elected Legislative Assembly, which the Representation of the People Act sets at 70 seats. The Assembly may make laws on the State List and Concurrent List except public order, police and land (State List entries 1, 2 and 18, in the Seventh Schedule’s lists). If the Lieutenant Governor and the ministers differ, the Lieutenant Governor refers the matter to the President.

On 11 May 2023 the Supreme Court held that the Delhi government has legislative and executive power over “services”, the posting and control of civil servants, except for public order, police and land. It also held that Parliament can legislate on every State List and Concurrent List matter for Delhi, including the excluded ones. Parliament then passed an Act of 11 August 2023, deemed in force from 19 May 2023 (the Delhi government piece goes into both), that set up a National Capital Civil Service Authority of the Chief Minister, the Chief Secretary and the Principal Home Secretary. The Authority recommends transfers and postings of senior officers to the Lieutenant Governor, and section 45H says that in a difference of opinion the Lieutenant Governor’s decision is final.

Puducherry’s assembly rests on the Government of Union Territories Act, 1963, in force there from 1 July 1963. Section 3 provides 30 elected seats and lets the Central Government nominate up to three more members. The Supreme Court held on 6 December 2018, in K. Lakshminarayanan v. Union of India, that the Centre makes those nominations under Article 239A and section 3(3) without needing the advice of Puducherry’s ministers, and that nominated members vote like any other member, including on the budget and no-confidence motions.

Jammu and Kashmir became a union territory on 31 October 2019 under the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act, 2019, which received assent on 9 August 2019. Section 13 applies Article 239A to it and section 14 creates the Assembly. The Act as passed set 107 seats, with 24 kept vacant for areas of the former state under Pakistan’s occupation. The 2023 amendment (Act 35 of 2023, 15 December 2023) raised the figure to 114, of which 90 are filled by election, 7 reserved for Scheduled Castes and 9 for Scheduled Tribes. The same amendment lets the Lieutenant Governor nominate up to two members from Kashmiri migrants, one of them a woman, and one displaced person from the part of the former state under Pakistan’s occupation.

The Jammu and Kashmir Assembly may legislate on the State List except public order and police, and on the Concurrent List. Section 53 has the Lieutenant Governor act in his discretion on matters outside the Assembly’s powers and on the All India Services and the Anti Corruption Bureau. According to Free Press Kashmir, on 25 September 2026 the Chief Minister moved a resolution in the Assembly asking the Government of India to restore full statehood, saying that delimitation and elections had taken place and statehood had not followed. The report describes protests in the House as the resolution was moved and records no vote. The Article 370 piece traces the sequence from 2019.

Ladakh has no legislature but two elected hill councils

Section 3 of the 2019 Act formed Ladakh from the Kargil and Leh districts, and its heading says “without Legislature”. The Lieutenant Governor administers it with advisers appointed by the Central Government (section 58), and it has one Lok Sabha seat.

Its elected bodies are district councils that predate the territory. The Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council, Leh, was constituted under an Act of 1995, held its first election on 28 August 1995 and met for the first time on 3 September 1995. Kargil’s council came into existence in July 2003 with 30 councillors, 26 of them elected and four nominated, according to the Kargil district administration.

Chandigarh is run by the Governor of a neighbouring state

Chandigarh became a union territory when Punjab was reorganised on 1 November 1966, and it serves as the joint capital of Punjab and Haryana. The Ministry of Home Affairs says the Governor of Punjab functions as its Administrator, with a senior IAS officer as Adviser. Business Standard dates that arrangement to 1 June 1984. It has no assembly, and Article 240 does not name it, so Parliament legislates for it directly.

A proposed Constitution (131st Amendment) Bill, listed for the winter session of 2025, aimed to include Chandigarh in Article 240. Parties in Punjab objected, some saying it could lead to a separate administrator. On 23 November 2025 a ministry spokesperson said the proposal was only meant to simplify the Centre’s law-making for the territory, that no final decision had been taken, and that there was no plan to introduce a Bill in that session, Business Standard reported.

The Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Lakshadweep are governed by presidential regulations

Article 240 is in use today. The Andaman and Nicobar Islands Registration of Societies Regulation, 2026, published in the Gazette on 27 August 2026, says the President promulgated it under that article. An older regulation, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands (Protection of Aboriginal Tribes) Regulation, 1956, governs the tribal reserves. Its rules of 21 April 1957 provide passes under section 7 and trade licences under section 6(1) for reserved areas.

Lakshadweep is a single-district territory, according to its administration, of 32 square kilometres with ten inhabited islands, and its 2011 Census population was 64,429. The Lakshadweep Panchayats Regulation, 1994, promulgated by the President on 23 April 1994 and in force from 23 May 1995, provides ten village panchayats, one on each inhabited island, and one district panchayat. The first village panchayats were constituted in December 2002 and the district panchayat in January 2003.

Two territories merged into one on 26 January 2020

Dadra and Nagar Haveli became a territory on 11 August 1961, through the Tenth Amendment. Daman and Diu was part of the Goa, Daman and Diu territory created after the 1961 liberation of Goa and became a territory of its own on 30 May 1987, when Goa became a state.

Act 44 of 2019 received assent on 9 December 2019 and, according to the Constitution’s footnotes, took effect on 26 January 2020. Section 3 forms the Union territory of Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu from the two. Section 6 allots it two Lok Sabha seats, and section 8 keeps the Bombay High Court’s jurisdiction. The merger brought the number of union territories from nine, the count after 31 October 2019, to eight.

Nineteen seats in the Lok Sabha, and a Rajya Sabha seat for three

Article 81(1)(b) allows not more than 20 members of the House of the People to represent union territories. The seats now allotted add up to 19: Delhi 7, Jammu and Kashmir 5, Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu 2, and one each for Ladakh, Chandigarh, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Lakshadweep and Puducherry. The Lakshadweep seat is reserved for Scheduled Tribes. The Lok Sabha explainer covers how the 543 seats are set.

The Fourth Schedule gives Rajya Sabha seats to three territories: Delhi 3, Jammu and Kashmir 4 and Puducherry 1. Ladakh, Chandigarh, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Lakshadweep and Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu have none.