In which year NEFA was renamed as Arunachal Pradesh?

General-awareness questions on India's north-eastern political history often test the North-Eastern Areas (Reorganisation) Act, 1971, the law that restructured the frontier tracts administered from Assam — including converting the North-East Frontier Agency (NEFA) into a separate constitutional unit.

NEFA was administered as a frontier tract of Assam under the Ministry of External Affairs (later the Ministry of Home Affairs). Under the North-Eastern Areas (Reorganisation) Act, 1971, NEFA was renamed and constituted as the Union Territory of Arunachal Pradesh, with effect from 20 January 1972. So the actual renaming into 'Arunachal Pradesh' took legal effect in 1972; it later became a full state of the Indian Union in 1987.

• 1950 — this predates NEFA's own formal constitution as a distinct frontier agency; no renaming event occurred this year.

• 1960 — NEFA continued under its original name through this decade; there was no reorganisation or renaming in this year.

• 1971 — this is the year Parliament enacted the North-Eastern Areas (Reorganisation) Act; the year of legislative enactment is not the same as the year the renaming itself came into legal effect.

Hence, NEFA was renamed as Arunachal Pradesh in 1972.