Talk:Northeast India
Discussion page of Northeast India
More actions
Talk
Discussion for: Northeast India • View • Links • Related changes
Use this page for verification notes, disputes, and action items. Keep narrative content on the article.
Page scope
Northeast India is a Growing Region: a named cultivation region that sits above Growing Areas and below the regional complex and gene pool. It covers the districts of north-east India where the sources read place cannabis cultivation since 2000: West Tripura, Sepahijala, South Tripura, Khowai, Unakoti and North Tripura in Tripura; Goalpara in Assam; East Khasi Hills and South West Garo Hills in Meghalaya; Ukhrul and Pherzawl in Manipur. It does not cover the whole of the north-eastern states. Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim belong to Eastern Himalayas. Its growing areas are Sepahijala, West Tripura and South Tripura.
Data verification
Check the main page for the sources behind each statement. Discuss the districts the region takes in, its growing areas, and the accessions and news items that belong to it here.
Discussion
Why the region is on the map
- No source read describes "Northeast India" as a cannabis region in those words. The region rests on sources that place cultivation in particular districts:
- Tripura. The Narcotics Control Bureau's annual reports for 2016 and 2017 name Tripura among the states with "illicit cultivation and wild growth of Cannabis in hilly and remote areas"; its state-wise charts show cannabis destroyed in Tripura in 2014 (123 acres) and 2016 (431 acres). The state government's written reply to the assembly (Tripurainfo, 17 March 2026) gives 12,479.98 ha destroyed in three years and names Sepahijala as the district with the largest area. Press reports name drives district by district: Sepahijala (about 50 reports, 2018–2026, set out on Sepahijala), West Tripura and South Tripura (on their own pages), Khowai (South Ghilatali nurseries, Tripura Times, 25 July 2025; and a drive at Melkabari in November 2025 whose report is no longer online), Unakoti (Ramdula Para, NE Now, 18 December 2023; Machmara tea garden, IANS, January 2026) and North Tripura (Katuacharra, Tripura Times, 2 November 2025).
- Assam. The Sentinel (30 December 2021): 15 bighas destroyed on the Latibari, Bamunialga and Patakata chars under the Chunari police station, Goalpara district. The NCB chart for 2016 shows 2 acres for the state.
- Meghalaya. Millennium Post (22 October 2025): five hectares at Laitlulong, Sohiong area, East Khasi Hills district. NE Now (14 December 2018): 32 patches destroyed at Kuligoan under the Mahendraganj police station.
- Manipur. Eastern Mirror (27 January 2014): 23 acres in Ukhrul district. The News Mill (ANI, 17 February 2025): about 6,000 plants on three hectares between the Saikulphai and Vangai ranges, Pherzawl district. The NCB charts show cannabis destroyed in Manipur in 2014, 2015 and 2016.
- No source read names cultivation in Mizoram or Nagaland, or in the Dhalai and Gomati districts of Tripura (Dhalai's two reports are seizures of dry ganja on the road). The NCB's 2016 report names Nagaland, with Assam, among the main transit routes for ganja.
- The 1893–94 evidence of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (Vol. I, chs. III, IV and VII) concerns the Assam province of the time, Hill Tippera and Manipur. The article reports it by the names the Commission used and does not map it onto the present districts.
Where the sources disagree
- Cultivation in Hill Tippera, 1893. The state's memorandum to the Hemp Drugs Commission said that hemp was not cultivated in the state, and the officiating magistrate of Noakhali, N. K. Bose (Vol. IV, Bengal witness no. 25, p. 66), reported the Maharaja's minister as stating that ganja was not grown in the Maharaja's territory "except in a very small quantity". The Commission (Vol. I, paras. 35 and 100) found evidence of "some cultivation", of "the ruder sort". The Bengal excise inspector A. C. Mukerjee (Vol. IV, p. 174) wrote that ganja was "regularly cultivated" in the Maharaja's territories, and G. C. Basak, deputy magistrate at Brahmanbaria (Vol. IV, p. 105), that "a few seers" were grown in the Tippera hills. The article gives the Commission's finding and attributes the two witnesses.
How the border is drawn
- The border is a proxy, drawn on the 11 districts named above, from their OpenStreetMap administrative relations (West Tripura 2026460, Sipahijala 9519791, South Tripura 2026470, Khowai 9519814, Unakoti 9520112, North Tripura 2026469, Goalpara 2025888, East Khasi Hills 2027522, South West Garo Hills 9522314, Ukhrul 2027971, Pherzawl 9533549). The outline is in several parts, and the infobox area (about 16,500 km²) is its measured area.
- Kuligoan. The NE Now report calls Kuligoan's district "South Garo Hills", but names the additional magistrate of South West Garo Hills and the deputy commissioner at Ampati, the headquarters of South West Garo Hills district, in which Mahendraganj lies. The border takes in South West Garo Hills.
- Ukhrul. The 2014 report names no village. The border takes in the present Ukhrul district.
- The districts of Assam named in an undated Assam Tribune report (Bongaigaon, South Salmara and Chirang) are not in the border: the report gives cannabis and poppy together, without separating them.
Growing status
The status is Active: cannabis is reported destroyed in the region in every year from 2023 to 2026, in Tripura, and in Meghalaya and Manipur in 2025. No source read says that growing has ended anywhere in the region.
Sources not used
- Parliamentary answers and Press Information Bureau releases with state-wise cannabis figures (sansad.in, mha.gov.in, pib.gov.in) could not be reached. The NCB annual report for 2018 is a scan without a text layer, and those for 2019 and 2020 were too large to fetch.
- No UNODC, INCB or peer-reviewed source on cannabis cultivation in north-east India as a whole was found.