The India Annual Winter Cropped Area, 2001 - 2016 consists of annual winter cropped areas for most of India (except the Northeastern states) from 2000-2001 to 2015-2016. This data set utilizes the NASA Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI; spatial resolution: 250m) for the winter growing season (October-March). The methodology uses an automated algorithm identifying the EVI peak in each pixel for each year and linearly scales the EVI value between 0% and 100% cropped area within that particular pixel. Maps were then resampled to 1 km and were validated using high-resolution QuickBird, RapidEye, SkySat, and WorldView-2 images spanning 2008 to 2016 across 11 different agricultural regions of India. The spatial resolution of the data set is 1 km, resampled from 250m. The data are distributed as GeoTIFF and NetCDF files and are in WGS 84 projection.