Duties And Powers Of Sub Divisional Officer 24e72

The duties of the Sub Divisional Officer (Civil) within his Sub Division are almost similar to those of the Deputy Commissioner within his district. In all matters of istration, he has to be the Deputy Commissioner's principal agent. He is also incharge of various development activities going on in the Sub Division and is also responsible for co-ordinating the work of various departments. For that he has to tour the area to keep a watch on the development activities, the revenue istration as also the law & Order situation in his Sub Division. Besides this he has to look after the grievances of the public and to attend to the problems arising out of the natural calamities. He supervises the work of Revenue agency in the Sub Division. There is no denying the fact that the job of a Sub Divisional Officer (civil) is independent in character to some extent. He is primarily responsible for everything that happens within his jurisdiction and must accordingly take his decisions to a large extent, independently. Sub Divisional Officer (Civil) is conferred with various powers under the land revenue and tenancy acts. He also acts as Assistant Collector under the Punjab Land Revenue Act and Punjab Tenancy Act. He is also the appellate authority in cases decided by his subordinate revenue officers. The Executive Magistrate placed by the State Government as incharge of the Sub Division is termed as the Sub Divisional Magistrate Under section 20(4) Cr.P.C. and under section 23 Cr.P.C. the Sub divisional Officer like other Executive Magistrates of the District is subordinate to the District Magistrate and is responsible for the maintenance of law and order within the limits of his local jurisdiction. He enjoys very wide powers under section 107/151,109,110,133,144,and 145 Cr.P.C. etc. He also hears court cases under these sections. 214. Qualification required for successful district istration. To manage districts successfully require qualities rarely found united in a single person. No man can properly represent government to the people who is lacking in sympathy or in the power of conversing with them easily in their own tongue. But to these qualities must be added

patience and promptitude, tact and firmness, accessibility without familiarity, a Sherwood appreciation of knowledge of the details of all branches of his duty and great capacity for personal exertion, with a willingness to hand over to trustworthy subordinates a large share of the work, while maintaining complete control over the machinery of istration. One great secret of success is the power of making full use of assistants in all grades. The collector who insists on doing everything himself is sure to leave many things undone and to fritter away on small details time that should be devoted to more important matters. At the same time, he is responsible for and bound to control, all the doings of his subordinates, and there is nothing they more readily believe then that this or that official, whose duties bring him much in with his master has an unique influence over him. The work should be carefully laid out the part of it, which is entrusted, to each officer and the limits within which he may act in his own authority being explained to him. No one can do this who has not himself a thorough acquaintance with every branch of district work and of the powers and capacities of his establishment it may be said that much of the success of district istration depends on accuracy of judging of how much may suitability be left to others and how much must be done by the deputy commissioner himself. 215. Aids to rapid acquisition of knowledge of a district. Every deputy commissioner is bound, when making over charge, to hand to his successor a confidential memorandum calling his attention to the most important features of the district istration and supplying him with notes as to the chief matters which are pending and as to the character and capabilities if his principal subordinates. Much information regarding the district lies ready to hand in the gazetteer and on settlement and assessment reports. If diligent personal enquiry and systematic touring supplement these sources of information, it is possible to obtain a real grasp of the work in a comparatively short space of time. 217. Extra assistant commissioners and tahsildars. The efficiency of a collector’s istration depends greatly on the extent to which he can get good work out of his colleagues and subordinates and this in turn depends to large extent on his own conduct towards them. Under the peculiar social difficulties of the country, the accurate estimate of character obtainable from the confidences of private intercourse is difficult to secure, and it becomes ass the more important to give free access to them in all official matters and to take every step to inspire them with confidence in his judgement, rectitude and impartiality. Unwarranted suspicion may be as fatal as unwarranted confidence. These officers are the expectants of the collector’s orders, they must be in great measure, the exponents of his will, and should be to some degree his confidential advisers in cases of

difficulty. It will be found good policy to consult these who are best able to give advice, and to weight their expressed opinions impartially and disionately. The following considerations should be borne in mind with regard to the matters mentioned in the preceding paragraph:(a) Departmental Examinations- the learner must read booked in his own time. The main difficulty is with the languages. A in the examination does not always mean that a candidate is intelligible in the field. Assistant commissioners under training should speak nothing but undue to the tahsildars and revenue assistants with whom they tour, and these officers should have orders to correct their mistakes. Urdu and Punjabi are best learned from selected court readers, who are less prone to “talk down” to their pupis than the illqualified professional teacher usually available in small stations. Urdu should be ed in may and Punjab in October. To fulfil the language test so far as that relates to judicial work, officers should make a practice of reading through an easy petition or other simple vernacular record every day from the time they commence to study the language with a munshi, and should seek to acquire as quickly as possible a knowledge of the translation of the translation of the commoner used in the principal acts which they have to take up, and in rules under them, particularly those under the land revenue and tenancy acts. Parts of these should be read with the court reader and a careful record should be made of the translation of all as they are met. As soon as a knowledge of these has been acquired, officers should commence to practice themselves in re-writing translations of as judgements, etc., which they will translate from the vernacular as explained above. Junior officers should take every opportunity of mixing and talking with all classes of Indians, and especially the agricultural classes. No one should ever be discouraged at slow progress in speaking the language. Even in the case of those who find special difficulty in picking up a language colloquially, experience shows that if only one struggles on persistently, fluency is bound to come in the long run. It is a good plan to note under various heads for ready reference all new words that one heads, and it is an excellent plan for acquiring the accent and run of the language to repeat over to oneself the words spoken by others as exactly as possible whether they intend to go in for language reward examinations or not, all junior officers should make a point of carefully reading through a certain number of good urdu books vocabulary. Those offices, who, while studying the language, will take the trouble to acquire some facility in oriental penmanship will find that they will never regret the spent on this accomplishment.

(b) Contract with the people—a knowledge of the people and their ways can be acquired only by systematic touring. Newly ed officers should be told to keep their eyes open on tour and to add questions about everything that they do not understand. istration matters such as crime, medical relief, education, the cooperative movement, communications, agricultural improvement and public health should be borne in mind and studied. (c) Magisterial work—as regards training in judicial work, the best plan at first if for a junior officer to sit some hours daily in the court of another magistrate or judge for a week or two, and with his codes in his hand learn for by observation something of the actual practice of procedure and get a flair for the method of reasoning which an intelligent magistrate employs in arriving at his decisions. In learning this he will probably also pick up a number of the of procedure. He should at the same time begin to work through evidence and the proceedings as he does so, and afterwards using these translations for re-translation into the vernacular. After two weeks of such work an officer will probably have gained sufficient experience to enable him to try very simple cases which the district magistrate into ordinary matters. Every officer should continue for some methods to translate his English judgements into the vernacular so as to acquire increased facility in this respect. (d) Revenue work—a properly arranged program should give the assistant commissioner a general outline of the routine revenue work of a district. Form his third month the learner will do 2ndgrade revenue court work. From his seventh or eighth month he should be given the work of one or two kanungo’s circles. He should propose the mode of partition in a few partition grades works in the circle selected including revenue court work. (e) Training in treasury, office work, and general istration—treasury training is best done in the summer, whether in the plains of hills. The outlines of office organization should be taught early-say, in the second month; no independent office work should be given to a pupil until about the eighth month. The best” subject” to be entrusted to him then are local bodies and or exercise. Both these subjects involve the application of acts and rules; vernacular correspondence with subordinate authorities; and formal English correspondence with superiors. By “general istration” is meant those istrative matters which cannot be grouped under any one head, but which occupy much of a depute commissioner’s time, e.g. crime, the activities of the beneficent departments, elections, political unrest and the like. The learner can best inform himself on these matters by discussions with his deputy commissioner. He should also spend some days in the office of the district board, which, when the deputy commissioner is chairman, is not under the officer-in-charge of local bodies. These several matter require attention on

tour and the assistant commissioner should be instructed accordingly when orders for each tour are given to him.