District Planning Committees (DPCs), constitutionally mandated under Articles 243ZD and 243ZE of the Constitution of India, and are envisaged as the apex decentralized planning institutions responsible for integrating rural and urban development plans at the district level. Despite their critical role in strengthening decentralized governance, facing several functional challenges and issues related to the administrative bottlenecks. This paper has made an attempt to examine the institutional design, composition, powers, functional processes, participation patterns, and planning effectiveness of DPCs from selected states. Based on the primary data collected from 314 DPC members across nine states, the study reveals significant gaps between constitutional intent and operational challanges. Key findings indicate some important issues like, dominance of elected Zilla Panchayat members, minimal inclusion of subject experts, limited awareness of statutory powers, inadequate authority and resources, infrequent meetings, weak deliberative processes, and low intellectual participation of members. The paper argues that, DPCs function largely as ceremonial approval bodies rather than strategic planning institutions. It concludes that without structural reforms, capacity building, administrative autonomy, and political commitment, DPCs will remain peripheral to district development planning. The study offers policy recommendations to strengthen DPCs as effective instruments of democratic decentralization and integrated development