North-East India: Seven Sisters, Chicken's Neck and NEC

North-East India is the eight-state region east of the Siliguri Corridor: the seven states known as the Seven Sisters, with Sikkim added to the group after 1975. The region makes up a small share of India's area but carries about 98 per cent of its boundary with foreign countries along its own borders, which is why examiners keep returning to it. Questions are almost always of four kinds: the state and its capital, the year a state was born, the country or countries it touches, and the body that plans for the region. Learn the region as a table and the marks are certain.

The Seven Sisters, their capitals and statehood

The name Seven Sisters was given in 1972 by Jyoti Prasad Saikia, a journalist in Tripura, during a radio talk, and the newspapers carried it until it became the region's second name. Three of the seven were born on the same day, 21 January 1972, when Meghalaya became a full state and the Union Territories of Manipur and Tripura were raised to statehood under the North-Eastern Areas (Reorganisation) Act, 1971. Two more, Arunachal Pradesh and Mizoram, became states together on 20 February 1987.

Arunachal Pradesh, called the North East Frontier Agency until it was renamed in 1972, is the largest state of the region in area, and Tripura the smallest among the Seven Sisters. Assam touches seven Indian states, more than any other state of the region, and Tripura is almost an island inside Bangladesh, which wraps around it on three sides.

The Siliguri Corridor, the Chicken's Neck

The whole region hangs from a strip of West Bengal about twenty kilometres wide at its narrowest, lying between Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh. It is called the Siliguri Corridor or the Chicken's Neck, and it is the only land link between the North-East and the rest of India. The strip was left behind by the partition of 1947, when the districts of eastern Bengal went to East Pakistan and cut the old road and rail routes to Assam. National Highway 27 and the New Jalpaiguri junction run through it, and because everything, from grain to troops, moves along it, the corridor is a standing question in both geography and security papers.

The North Eastern Council and DoNER

The North Eastern Council was created by the North Eastern Council Act, 1971 and began working in 1972 as the planning and advisory body for the region, with its headquarters at Shillong. Its members are the Governors and the Chief Ministers of the member states. Sikkim was admitted as the eighth member by an amendment in 2002, which also turned the Council into a regional planning body. The Council works under the Ministry of Development of North Eastern Region, the department set up in 2001 and later made a full ministry, which runs the region's special central schemes.

Special constitutional provisions

• Article 371A gives Nagaland special status, including protection for Naga customary law.
• Article 371B provides a committee of the Assam Assembly for its tribal areas, and Article 371C a hill areas committee for Manipur.
• Article 371F covers Sikkim, inserted when it joined the Union, and Article 371G covers Mizoram.
• The Sixth Schedule provides Autonomous District Councils in Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram.
• The Inner Line Permit, under a regulation of 1873, is required of outsiders in Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Mizoram and Manipur.

Landmarks examiners pick

• Majuli in Assam, the largest river island, on the Brahmaputra.
• Loktak Lake in Manipur with its floating phumdis, and Keibul Lamjao, the only floating national park, home of the sangai deer.
• Mawsynram and Cherrapunji, also called Sohra, in Meghalaya, among the wettest places on earth.
• Kaziranga, home of the one-horned rhinoceros, and Manas, both World Heritage sites in Assam.
• Hornbill festival of Nagaland, which opens on 1 December, the state's formation day; Bihu in Assam; Wangala of the Garos; Chapchar Kut in Mizoram.