The recent representation submitted by the Kohima Bar Association (KBA) to the Chief Secretary of Nagaland has brought an uncomfortable, long-simmering contradiction out into the open. The Bar’s submission is unequivocal: Village Councils across Nagaland lack the legal authority to create their own systems of land pattas, enforce periodic ownership renewals, or levy compulsory, percentage-based transfer fees on land transactions. Citing Section 15(1)(g) of the Nagaland Village and Tribal Councils Act, 1978, the KBA pointed out that the statutory mandate to consent to land transfers and maintain records does not confer sweeping taxation, title-granting, or rent-seeking powers.
To anyone examining the issue through the lens of formal administrative law, the Bar’s grievance is unassailable. An institution regulated by statute cannot exercise powers that the statute does not explicitly grant. Moreover, the Bar articulates a real public grievance felt acutely in peri-urban belts like Kohima, Chümoukedima, and Dimapur, where landowners and prospective buyers often encounter arbitrary transfer deductions and recurring renewal dues.
Yet, to treat this simply as a problem of errant Village Councils that can be settled by an executive cease-and-desist circular is to misdiagnose the disease. What we are witnessing is not merely an administrative infraction; it is the inevitable collision between modern statutory legalism and traditional authority, born out of decades of state lethargy and an unaddressed institutional vacuum.
The Colonial Vocabulary of the “Patta”
There is a tragic irony in Village Councils issuing documents called pattas. In historical Indian land revenue administration, a patta is a leasehold title deed granted by a sovereign state or feudal landlord to an occupant, subject to land revenue or rent.
Naga customary land tenure operates on an entirely distinct premise. Land in our villages has never derived its validity from a sovereign charter, a state grant, or bureaucratic benevolence. It is held under customary arrangements, lineage, clan, individual, or village community, grounded in territorial heritage and customary social contracts.
When Village Councils adopt the language of pattas and periodic renewal fees, they unwittingly borrow the coercive, extractive vocabulary of the colonial and post-colonial state. In attempting to govern land under the pressures of a cash economy, rapid urban expansion, and commercial commodification, councils have mimicked the very bureaucratic mechanisms alien to customary tenure.
As I have argued in my working paper, Ontological Reduction of Naga Customary Institutions, when traditional custodians abandon their organic epistemological roots to adopt the formal, extractive mechanics of the state, they inadvertently compromise their own customary legitimacy. In doing so, Village Councils risk reducing themselves to quasi-municipal rent collectors, leaving their decisions acutely vulnerable to charges of being ultra vires.
The Vacuum Created by State Inaction
Why did this occur? Because the state government has consistently treated Article 371A(1)(a)(iv) of the Constitution of India as a passive political shield rather than an active legislative mandate.
Article 371A was enacted precisely to ensure that parliamentary laws regarding the ownership and transfer of land would not apply to Nagaland unless the State Legislative Assembly so decided. It was designed to give the state the constitutional room to formulate its own progressive, culturally anchored legal frameworks.
Instead, the state has allowed a dangerous legislative vacuum to persist. For nearly five decades, the governance of village authority has been left tethered to the skeletal, ambiguously worded provisions of the Nagaland Village and Tribal Councils Act of 1978. Section 15(1)(g) of the Act simply directed councils to “consent” to transfers and “record” them, without offering procedural rules, statutory boundaries, or modern registration standards.
Nature, and the property market, abhors a vacuum. As land became prime commercial collateral and transacted with increasing frequency, Village Councils improvised their own informal regulatory regimes. The Bar rightly warned of practices “acquiring the appearance of legal authority through repeated use.” But this “custom by default” flourished because the state failed to do the hard work of codified institution-building.
Why an Executive Ban Will Not Work
If the government’s response to the KBA representation is merely to issue a sweeping notification declaring all Village Council land records and fees void, it will exacerbate the crisis.
Without Village Council verification and consent, property transactions in Nagaland would descend into absolute chaos. Formal revenue administration and cadastral surveys cover only tiny, historically notified pockets in the plains of Dimapur; the vast majority of Nagaland’s landmass remains unsurveyed, unmapped by state survey departments, and governed exclusively by customary village boundaries. Commercial banks already struggle to extend credit because customary titles often lack statutory clarity under standard mortgage laws.
Wiping out local council documentation without putting a credible, statutory alternative in place will simply push transactions underground into unrecorded, informal agreements, spawning endless civil litigation.
What Genuine Empowerment Looks Like
The resolution lies neither in unchecked local discretion nor in a bureaucratic takeover that erases village autonomy. The state government must take the Bar’s intervention as an urgent wake-up call to enact long-overdue, systemic reform:
- Notify Uniform Administrative Rules: Under the rule-making powers of the 1978 Act, the government should immediately notify clear regulations for Section 15(1)(g). These rules must explicitly outlaw coercive “renewal fees” for customary land and abolish arbitrary percentage-based transaction cuts. In their place, the state should prescribe a modest, flat administrative fee strictly meant to cover the actual costs of boundary inspection, verification, and record entry.
- Standardize the Instrument: Retire the term patta. Replace it with a legally unambiguous statutory instrument, a “Customary Certificate of Land Ownership and Transfer”, jointly verified by the Village Council and the Gaon Buras (GBs), accompanied by basic, verifiable spatial boundary descriptions.
- Enact a Comprehensive Nagaland Customary Land Governance Act: The State Legislative Assembly must finally utilize Article 371A affirmatively. We need comprehensive state legislation that establishes Village Councils as statutory custodial registrars within their customary domains, while linking their local registries with sub-divisional administrative offices for transparent public indexing and GIS mapping. Crucially, such legislation must explicitly validate these customary certificates as bankable collateral for regulated financial institutions, while upholding constitutional bars against land alienation to non-indigenous entities.
- Institutionalize Transparency: Customary authority survives only when backed by moral legitimacy. All fees collected by Village Councils for verification and recording services must be documented in official bank accounts and opened to mandatory social audits during general village assemblies. Discretionary, un-audited levies damage the standing of customary institutions in the public eye.
Conclusion
The Kohima Bar Association has performed an important service by pointing out that statutory authority cannot be conjured out of thin air. But the legal fraternity, the government, and civil society must look beyond immediate legal technicalities.
The central challenge in Nagaland is not that our customary institutions have too much authority, but that the state has failed to empower and align them within a transparent, modern constitutional framework. As long as Article 371A is treated as an excuse for legislative inaction rather than an engine for indigenous governance, our land administration will remain trapped in litigation, uncertainty, and friction. It is time for the state to step up and build the bridge.
{Amba Jamir is an independent development and policy strategist. The conceptual critique on the institutional shifts of traditional bodies referenced in this article draws from his working paper, “Ontological Reduction of Naga Customary Institutions,” accessible at:[https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6783098](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6783098)}
