Tehsil

A tehsil or tahsil/tahasil (Urdu: تحصیل‎, Punjabi: ਤਹਿਸੀਲ, Hindi: तहसील, also known as taluka (or taluq/taluk) or mandal, is an administrative division of some countries of South Asia. Gradually under the British Raj these terms replaced the earlier terms pargana, pergunnah and thannah.

A tehsil consists of an area of land with a city or town that serves as its headquarters, with possible additional towns, and usually a number of villages. As an entity of local government, the tehsil office (Panchayat samiti) 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 less officially the talukdar or taluka muktiarkar. In some instances, tehsils are called "blocks" (Panchayat union blocks), and although they may on occasion share the same area with a subdivision of a revenue divisions, known as revenue blocks, the two are distinct. For example, Raipur district in Chhattisgarh state is administratively divided into 13 tehsils and 15 revenue blocks. Nevertheless, the two are often conflated.

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