Tehsil

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The equivalent terms tehsil, tahsil, tahasil, taluka, taluk, and taluq refer to a unit of government in some countries of the Indian subcontinent.

Generally, a tehsil consists of a city or town that serves as its headquarters, possibly additional towns, and a number of villages. As an entity of local government, it exercises certain fiscal and administrative power over the villages and municipalities within its jurisdiction. It is the ultimate executive agency for land records and related administrative matters. Its chief official is called the tehsildar or talukdar.

It should be noted that tehsil and taluka and their variants are used as English words without further translation. Since these terms are unfamiliar to English speakers outside of the subcontinent, the word county has sometimes been provided as a gloss, on the basis that a tehsil, like a county, is an administrative unit hierarchically above the local city, town, or village, but subordinate to a larger state or province. However, India and Pakistan have two (or more, at least in parts of India) intermediate levels of hierarchy—the District and the tehsil, both of which are sometimes glossed as county. In neither case is the analogy is very precise in specific details.

[edit] India

The term taluka or taluk is used in some States, including Maharashtra, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Karnataka, and tehsil in others, such as Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, and Madhya Pradesh. Andhra Pradesh used to have taluks (with Firkas under them), but these have now been replaced with mandals.

Each taluka or tehsil is part of a larger District within a State or Union Territory. In some cases, the tehsils of a given District are organized into smaller groups of tehsils called Sub-Division (Pargana, Anuvibhag).

The governmental bodies called the panchayat samiti operate at the tehsil level.

The villages of a tehsil are grouped into smaller clusters known as hobli.

See also Subdivisions of India.

[edit] Pakistan

The term tehsil is used. The tehsil is the second-lowest tier of local government in Pakistan; each tehsil is part of a larger District (Zillah) within a Province.

See also Subdivisions of Pakistan.