Mandals

A tehsil (also known as a mandal or taluka) is an administrative division of some countries of South Asia. It is an area of land with a city or town that serves as its administrative centre, with possible additional towns, and usually a number of villages. The terms in India have replaced earlier geographical terms, such as pargana, pergunnah and thannah, used under the Delhi Sultanate and the British Raj.

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. The chief official is called the tahsildar or, less officially, the talukdar or taluka muktiarkar or Tehsildar. Taluk or Tehsil can be said sub districts in Indian (Bharat) context. In some instances, Tehsils overlap with "Blocks" (Panchayat union blocks or Panchayat development blocks), Tehsil comes under the Land and Revenue department headed by Tehsildar and Blocks come under the Rural development department headed by the Block Development Officer and serve the different government administrative function over the same or similar geographical area.

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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