Talk:District magistrate

Sources Needed
No sources are given. What law governs the district collectors funtions? KristoferP 05:51, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

There is no specific law or Act of the Parliament under which the Collectors are appointed. The District Magistrate draws his powers from Sec 20 of Criminal Procedure Code, 1973. However, almost 40% of the Acts mention or involve the District Collector!

Collectors' functions are multifarious. They fall under three categories:

1. He/she is responsible for maintaining the law and order in the district; hence the powers of District Magistrate are conferred on the Collector, although, in metropolitan cities, Collectors are no longer magistrates. In many states, he/she heads the district police also.

2. He/she is the custodian of land records; the chief of the Census operations; the head of the criminal prosecution; the District Election Officer; heads all the departments of the State Government at the district; protects the interests of the State Governments.

3. He/she is the head of the welfare administration of the district; hence normally they are the executive officers of the district panchayats. In practice, they wield much wider powers.

A Collector need not be from the Indian Administrative Service. He/she can be from the State Civil Services also.

Extract from un-published memoirs from Sir Frank Mudie
In Regulation Provinces, such as Bengal and Agra, the head of the district was called the Collector. In non-Regulation Provinces, such as Oudh and the Punjab, he was called the Deputy Commissioner. The reason for this apparently was, that after the extension of British rule under Dalhousie, there was not enough qualified Company servants to fill the new posts of Collector and, as the rule was that these posts could be filled only by regular Company civil servants, the name of the post was changed and a number of soldiers were appointed to them. In both cases Regulation and non-Regulation, he fulfilled exactly the same duties. He was District Magistrate and also Collector. As District Magistrate, he was the chief magistrate of the district and responsible for law and order in it. He had no actual authority over the police, but he and the Superintendent of Police were supposed to work closely together. Thus if Government thought that a district was getting out of hand, the Chief Secretary might write to the District Magistrate and tell him to do something about it, probably endorsing a copy of his letter to the Inspector General of Police so that he might issue necessary orders to the Superintendent of Police. As a Magistrate, the District Magistrate heard very few cases, mostly appeals from second and third class Magistrates. His main duty was to see that his subordinates, the deputy collectors and magistrates, did their work properly. The best way of ensuring this was to visit the jails and see that there was no unnecessary delay in the appearance of accused in court. This I did once a month. The jail was directly under the Civil Surgeon; both from a medical and administrative point of view, but here again the District Magistrate exercised supervisory powers. In fact, as head of the district, he more or less had to ensure that everything worked well.

Jcm.mudie (talk) 12:53, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

Edit to opening paragraph
The opening paragraph has a link to State governments of India which is consistent with the wording in the Appointment section. However, the term is linked to the phrase Central government which sounds like it is different than State governments. I've changed it, but I am not conversant with Indian government structure, so someone with more knowledge should confirm or correct.-- S Philbrick (Talk)  22:25, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

You are right.

Globalize
ATTN: District Collector is a post of Bangladesh, equivalent to the one in India. As the article is about 'District Collector', not 'District Collector of India', it should cover all similar topics from different countries. I have added brief description of Collector of Bangladesh. I worked a lot for it. So, please discuss. Thanks. Jafar Sadik Chy (Talk) 19:15, 12 August, 2017 (GMT)


 * There was content on Bangladesh removed from this article. It is titled as an overall 'district collector' article, so should not exclude the worldwide view. Mauls (talk) 10:59, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

Title
"District collector" is a general term for a number of posts, not a single post (such as the difference between 'prime minister' and 'Prime Minister of India'. Therefore it should be in lowercase, per WP:MOS (as it is in the article title). Mauls (talk) 10:59, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

Merger proposal
Proposed Merger of District Collector into Indian Administrative Service.

Someone added a merger tag on District Collector in 2016, but forgot to create a discussion, so here, I am doing that job, albeit a year late.SshibumXZ (Talk) (Contributions) 20:38, 5 September 2017 (UTC)


 * Oppose The article of District Collector has enough in-line citations, and is independently notable.SshibumXZ (Talk) (Contributions) 20:38, 5 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Oppose I just saw this on proposed mergers and I don't think it is a good idea to merge. District collector is a distinct post. IAS on the other hand is the entire civil service. An analogy would be Minister of Railways (India) and Ministry of Railways (India).--DreamLinker (talk) 15:38, 6 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Oppose Per SshibumXZ. Bingo bro   (Chat)  12:35, 1 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Oppose It is very different. Mauls (talk) 17:24, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

Globalization and title
I see you've changed the contents of the article District collector to accommodate almost analogous Bangladeshi post.
 * However, no references have been cited about either the Bangladeshi counterpart or the BCS.
 * Also, in Bangladesh DMs/Collectors/DCs are referred to as Deputy Commissioner, so, wouldn't it be nicer to have a new article named Deputy Commissioner (Bangladesh)? Especially, because Deputy Commissioner (India) already redirects to District collector. Regards, SshibumXZ (Talk) (Contributions). 19:51, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
 * That is one way forward, if there was sufficient content, but then District collector would need to become a disambiguation page, and the article moved to District collector (India). It can also be pointed out that the posts are very similar, with a joint history, and therefore the bulk of the two articles would be the same. Whilst this article retains a broad title, it cannot exclude the Bangladeshi content that was improperly reverted.Mauls (talk) 08:32, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
 * DMs/Collectors/DCs in India may perform the same functions as DCs in Bangladesh (with a few differences here and there), but the nomenclature is different.

If anything, there should be a Deputy Commissioner (Disambiguation). As Deputy Commissioner in Bangladesh exercises the roles of DM and Collector, but is designated as Deputy Commissioner. So, the plausible search term would be Deputy Commissioner, not District Collector. Regards, SshibumXZ (Talk) (Contributions). 14:36, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes, the posts share a common history, but, in my opinion, that doesn't say much. It's like saying Governor-General of India and Governor-General of Pakistan should be merged because their history is derived from Governor-General of British India.
 * There need not be a District Collector (India) page for two more reasons, viz-
 * 1) If I recall correctly, WP: MoS encourages natural usage of title wherever possible.
 * 2) The page District Collector is already linked to numerous articles, and relinking it would be not worth the exercise.
 * You now seem unclear whether you feel the Bagladeshi content should be split or not - you have mixed arguments for both. If the articles aren't split, it is not acceptable to just revert content because it is not about India. You are claiming the equivalent of saying an article titled Governor-General is only allowed content about the Governor-General of India, and that is not what WP:MoS says at all! The content should not have been reverted when it was originally added, and it is entirely appropriate in order to provide a full-worldview in an article about the general term.

Also, the appropriate place for this is in the relevant section of the article talk page, where user Jafar Sadik Chy asked for discussion of this content. Mauls (talk) 20:51, 6 October 2017 (UTC)
 * yep, I have mixed feelings about the addition of content. On one hand the article should have a worldwide perspective whilst it retains a broad title, but on the other hand the content added is unreferenced, so should be removed.

What I would suggest is to move District collector to District Collector (India) with a redirect, just like Home Secretary (United Kingdom) redirects to Home Secretary, and to create new page titled either District collector (disambiguation or Deputy commissioner (disambiguation).

And if it's all the same to you, I am thinking about copying this discussion to Talk: District collector. Regards, SshibumXZ (Talk) (Contributions). 14:45, 7 October 2017 (UTC)
 * That would be a better place - so that it is a broader discussion, and so that the eventual outcome is captured for future reference (so it doesn't get replayed later). If the Banglasdeshi content was removed for other reasons, that would be fair enough, but I unreverted it because the reversion was commented "This article is about India", and there was no discussion (despite a topic being started by the author). If it needs citations, this should first be tagged and a discussion held. Mauls (talk) 15:05, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

Notifying and inviting possibly interested/significant contributors for their comments:  and

Comment/Proposal: I suggest to move the article District collector to District Collector (India) with a redirect (as the case is Home Secretary (United Kingdom) and Home Secretary). I also suggest the creation of three articles viz. Deputy commissioner (disambiguation), Deputy commissioner (Bangladesh) and Deputy Commissioner (Pakistan), as the roles of the officer vary from country to country and from state to state within a country. Regards, SshibumXZ (Talk) (Contributions). 16:46, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

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