Talk:Eastern Ghats

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Page scope

Eastern Ghats is a Growing Region: a named cultivation region that sits above Growing Areas and below the regional complex. It covers the hill districts on both sides of the Andhra Pradesh–Odisha border where the sources place cannabis cultivation: Alluri Sitharama Raju District in Andhra Pradesh, and Malkangiri, Koraput, Rayagada, Gajapati and Kandhamal in Odisha. It does not cover the whole Eastern Ghats range. Its growing areas are Araku Valley and Koraput.

Data verification

Check the main page for the sources behind each statement. Discuss boundaries, the districts the region takes in, and the accessions and news items that belong to it here.

Discussion

Why the region is on the map

No source describes the "Eastern Ghats" as a cannabis region in those words. The region rests on sources that place cultivation in particular districts on either side of the border:
- A Narcotics Control Bureau official quoted by The Times of India (1 February 2021): cultivation in India is "largely concentrated around the Maoist-affected Andhra-Odisha border".
- For Odisha: the Revenue and Disaster Management Department's letter of 10 August 2026 (reported by OrissaPOST, 14 August 2026) and the Special Task Force review (Pragativadi, 9 September 2026), which both name Malkangiri, Koraput, Rayagada, Kandhamal, Gajapati and Boudh; Al Jazeera (1 January 2025), which names the same six; and the Comptroller and Auditor General's audit (Report No. 4 of 2017, para. 3.4.9, p. 33), which names Angul, Boudh, Deogarh, Gajapati, Kandhamal, Malkangiri, Rayagada and Sambalpur for 2014–15 to 2016–17.
- For Andhra Pradesh: the Visakhapatnam agency mandals named by Onmanorama (27 July 2016, citing the state Excise Department), The Hans India (24 February 2019) and ETV Bharat (7 July 2025). Since 31 December 2025 these mandals make up Alluri Sitharama Raju District (the district's official history page).
The 1893 evidence of the Hemp Drugs Commission (the Madras Board of Revenue's memorandum, Benson's bulletin, and the evidence of Narainaswamy, Taylor and Daniel) places cultivation in the hill tracts of the Vizagapatam and Ganjam districts of the Madras Presidency. The article reports those tracts by the names the sources use. It does not say which present districts the Goomsur maliahs or the Gulgunda Agency correspond to, because no source says so.
The district's official page describes Alluri Sitharama Raju District as hill country of the Eastern Ghats, and the Coco Genes listing quoted on COC-IND-AND-0120200001 calls Araku "a valley in Eastern Ghats".

Growing status

The status is Active: cultivation is reported every season up to 2025–26 on the Odisha side (36,508.792 acres destroyed in the six named districts in 2025–26). On the Andhra side ETV Bharat reported cultivation brought to "near zero" by 2025, but the Visakhapatnam Range police still destroyed 0.10 acres in 2025. No source says that cultivation in the region has ended.

How the border is drawn

The border is a proxy, drawn on administrative units: the 11 mandals of Alluri Sitharama Raju District as constituted on 31 December 2025 (OpenStreetMap mandal relations 10134253–10134257, 10134294, 10134303, 10134304 and 10136534–10136537) and the Odisha districts of Malkangiri (OSM relation 1984517), Koraput (1984516), Rayagada (1984529), Gajapati (1984576) and Kandhamal (1984577). The union is about 40,200 km², the figure in the infobox.
The units are the ones the sources report by. The district governments and the police report cultivation by district; the Andhra press reports it by mandal, and all the mandals it names lie in the 11.
The border takes in only these districts, not the whole Eastern Ghats range. Districts that the sources mention only for seizures or transit (Kalahandi, Nabarangpur, Ganjam, Anakapalli, Vizianagaram) are left out.
Boudh is named with the five Odisha districts in every recent Odisha government list, and by Al Jazeera. It is outside the border because no source places it in the Eastern Ghats hills; the article names it with its sources.
The 12 mandals that went to Polavaram District on 31 December 2025 were part of Alluri Sitharama Raju District until then. No source places cultivation there, so they are outside the border.
The border is not drawn from accession or news points. Araku (the Coco Genes lot), the Jolaput Reservoir item and the Naudimahao item in Kandhamal fall inside it; Boudh town, Visakhapatnam and Bhubaneswar fall outside.

Sources

Hemp Drugs Commission, 1894. Vol. III (Horne's memorandum, paras. 8–10, p. 83; Benson's bulletin, p. 243) and vol. VI (Madras witnesses 21, 69 and 103) are cited from the held copies and their page images.
Comptroller and Auditor General, Report No. 4 of 2017 (Revenue Sector, Government of Odisha, tabled 26 March 2018): chapter III; para. 3.4.9 is on p. 33.
Narcotics Control Bureau annual reports. 2014 (p. 20, state chart of cannabis destroyed) and 2017 (p. 11: "illicit cultivation and wild growth of Cannabis in hilly and remote areas of Himachal Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Tripura, Odisha, Jharkhand, etc."). The 2017 statement is not cited because it does not separate cultivation from wild growth.

Where the sources disagree

Koraput in the lists. The audit of 2017 does not name Koraput among the eight districts for 2014–15 to 2016–17; the Odisha government's lists of 2026 and Al Jazeera do. The article gives both.
Yields. The Andhra Pradesh Excise Department, as reported in 2016, put the crop at up to 5,000 plants an acre and 250–300 g a plant; ETV Bharat (2025) gives over 2,000 kg an acre. The article gives the department's figure on the Araku Valley page and neither here.

Other reports

UNODC. An OdishaTV article of 2021 quotes an unnamed UNODC report on Odisha; the report is not named, so it is not used.