The former Sirohi State was divided into six tehsils namely Abu road,Delwara, Pindwara, Reodar, Sheoganj and Sirohi. Just before the merger, another tehsil Bhawri was changed from a ‘hath-kharch’ tehsil to ‘Khalsa’. In 1950, the area which was merged into Rajasthan State was divided into five tehsils and placed in a single sub-division. Neechlagarh panchayat comes under bhakhar (hilly) area of the block.
Nichlagarh is an amazing place located in the foothills of Mount Abu. It consists of many hamlets and is part of Abu Road tehsil of Sirohi district in Rajasthan. If you look for Nichlagarh on a search engine, you will come to know that it is the same Nichlagarh that was in the news when US President Barack Obama, on his June 2015 India visit, spent 20 minutes with Sharmi Bai, then sarpanch of the village.
Take a look at these statistics: according to the 2011 census, there are 555 families in the village with a population of 3,079 and average illiteracy is reported to be 70%. Needless to say, 94% of the population belongs to the scheduled tribes, more than 72% people have no access to electricity, while 94% have no toilets. 40% of the population accesses water by walking to government-installed public hand-pumps, and only 45% claimed they have hand-pumps on their premises. Interestingly, 77% of the people have their own land, yet 43% claimed they were daily wage workers.
Nichlagarh now is a tribal Wi-Fi village, without any functional telecom service. I have no hesitation to say that this is actually a sign and symbol of Digital India, where one can convert the most excluded tribal village into a broadband-enabled Wi-Fi village.
During the period 1951-61, by and inter State transfer, Abu Road taluka (786.8 sq. kms.) of Banaskantha district under Gujarat State was transferred to this district of Rajasthan State, on the recommendations of the State Re-organisation Commission. Accordingly, a new Abu Road tehsil was constituted in Sirohi district. In the process of inter- tehsil readjustments, former Bhawri tehsil (582.7 sq. kms) was merged in Pindwara tehsil as such, at that time, there remained five tehsils viz. Sheoganj, Sirohi, Pindwara, Abu Road and Reodar. Besides, four villages (73.6 sq. kms.) were transferred from Reodar tehsil to the newly formed Abu Road tehsil, as a result of inter- tehsil transfers.
