Vol. 5, Issue 2, Part B (2023)

The Autonomous District Council (ADC) is a completely unique administrative mechanism, which has been put in place under the provision of the Sixth Schedule {Article 244(2) and 275(1)} of the Constitution as a way to preserve and protect the ethnic identities of the tribals of the North – East Region of the Country, specially living in the state of Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram. At present, there are three full-fledged autonomous district councils in Assam and out of these three the Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC) is one of the most remarkable one. The BTC is the end result of the movements led through the numerous social, students, and armed groups of the Bodos which was set up under the historic Act of 2003. Extensive and enormous power and functions have been bestowed to the BTC to fulfill the desires of the tribal people of the area. In this regard, it must be borne in mind that the most important aims and goals of the present study is to find out if the BTC has actually led to the devolution of power and functions towards the development of the common people or whether they have contributed more to corruption and mismanagement of resources. Accordingly, it has come to light that a good number of loopholes and shortcomings seem to plague the very mechanism of the BTC which have grossly affected their proper functioning. Therefore, in order to ensure good governance for the welfare of the entire society of the BTC, as was originally envisaged in the Sixth Schedule, some feasible recommendation have been tried to suggest in this presented paper.