Tamil Nadu - Governance and Administration

Governance and Administration

The Governor is the constitutional head of the state while the Chief Minister is the head of the government and the head of the council of ministers. The Chief Justice of the Madras High Court is the head of the judiciary. The present Governor, Chief Minister and the Chief Justice are Konijeti Rosaiah, J. Jayalalitha and M. Y. Eqbal respectively. Administratively the state is divided into 32 districts. It has 10 city corporations, 125 municipalities, 529 town panchayats and 12,524 village panchayats. Chennai (formerly known as Madras) is the state capital. It is the fourth largest city in India and is also one of the eight Metropolitan cities of India. The state comprises 39 Lok Sabha constituencies and 234 Legislative Assembly constituencies.

Tamil Nadu had a bicameral legislature until 1986, when it was replaced with a unicameral legislature, like most other states in India. The term length of the government is five years, as is elsewhere in India. The present government run by the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK)-led alliance came to power in 2011 and consists of a council of 33 ministers, headed by the Chief Minister J. Jayalalitha. The Tamil Nadu legislative assembly is housed at the Fort St. George in Chennai. The state had come under the President's rule rule on four occasions – first from 1976 to 1977, next for a short period in 1980, then from 1988 to 1989 and the latest in 1991.

The local administration is divided into revenue administration and developmental administration. Revenue administrative units are classified based on the district. Each of the 32 districts in Tamil Nadu is divided into divisions, which are further divided to Taluks. Each of these Taluks have a list of revenue villages under them. Tahsildar is the head of these Taluks. Developmental administration, in contrast, is carried out by Panchayat Unions (called blocks) in rural areas. These panchayat unions have a set of panchayat villages under them. In urban areas, the governance is done by municipal corporations, municipalities or town panchayats based on the size of the town. Tamil Nadu has 10 municipal corporations: Chennai, Madurai, Coimbatore, Tiruchirappalli, Salem, Tirunelveli, Erode, Tirupur and Thoothukudi, Vellore.

Tamil Nadu has been a pioneering state of E-Governance initiatives in India. A large part of the government records like land ownership records are digitised and all major offices of the state government like Urban Local Bodies — all the corporations and municipal office activities – revenue collection, land registration offices, and transport offices have been computerised. Tamil Nadu is one of the states where law and order has been maintained largely successfully. The Tamil Nadu Police Force is over 140 years old. It is the fifth largest state police force in India and has the largest strength of women police personnel in the country. As of 2003, the state had a total police population ratio of 1:668, higher than the national average of 1:717. The current Director General of Police (law and order) of Tamil Nadu is K. Ramanujan.