CHENNAI: To reduce public hardship and expedite service delivery, the state government has decided to revamp the process for issuing community, income and 24 other certificates.
Under the proposed reforms, deputy tahsildars posted at taluk offices will be empowered to issue most certificates across the state.
The move, which will do away with the existing two levels of scrutiny by tahsildars and Revenue Divisional Officers (RDOs) for several categories of certificates, is expected to cut the processing time from the current 15 days to just five days. The new system is likely to come into effect from July.
As part of the proposed reform, the regular tahsildar at the taluk level, who currently issues certificates, will be relieved of this responsibility and will instead focus exclusively on law-and-order matters and land administration.
TN gets around 30K applications daily for various certificates under 317 taluk offices
The task of issuing certificates of certain types will instead be assigned to the tahsildar in charge of social security schemes. Further, unmarried certificates, which have been issued based on applicants’ self-declaration since 2022, will continue to be issued online but they will now carry the digital signature of deputy tahsildar instead of tahsildar.
The proposed changes were discussed at a meeting chaired by Revenue Minister K A Sengottaiyan with the department officials at Ezhilagam recently.
A senior official from the revenue department told TNIE, “The RDOs will continue to remain the competent authority for issuing ST certificates and tahsildars for SC certificates. Apart from these two categories, most of the 24 other certificates issued by the department do not require the existing five-stage approval process involving officials from the VAO to the RDO. A three-stage process involving the VAO, revenue inspector, and deputy tahsildar is sufficient.”
A detailed government order outlining the authorised officers responsible for issuing various certificates and the transfer of certain duties from regular tahsildars to tahsildars under social security schemes is expected to be issued soon, the official added.
The state receives around 30,000 applications for various certificates every day under 317 taluk offices, a figure reaching to nearly 80,000 during the admission season between May and August. Besides easing the hardship faced by the public in obtaining certificates, the reform is also expected to speed up the processing of patta-related applications by regular tahsildars.
An RDO said that lakhs of applications for pattas, name transfers, and subdivision transfers are pending in taluk offices. “These applications often get delayed because tahsildars have to handle public protests, appear before courts, participate in meetings with local authorities and handle several other administrative responsibilities. Relieving them of certificate issuance duties will enable them to focus more on clearing patta applications and reduce pendency,” the officer said.
