Jalpaiguri

Jalpaiguri's earlier political history is closely connected with the Baikunthapur estate and its Raikat rulers. The family belonged to a collateral branch of the Koch ruling house. Its authority developed through relations with Koch Bihar and the revenue claims of the Mughal government, rather than through a simple sequence in which one centralized state replaced another. The estate maintained considerable local autonomy while acknowledging superior claims at different times.

The East India Company's acquisition of Bengal's revenue administration in 1765 brought another authority into these arrangements. In 1774 the Company confirmed Raikat Darpadeva in possession of Baikunthapur but assessed revenue on his lands and treated him as a zamindar. After 1793 the estate was placed under the permanent revenue settlement. These changes concerned the legal and fiscal position of an existing ruling family. They preceded the creation of the later British district and help distinguish Jalpaiguri's early modern estate history from its nineteenth-century administrative development.