Assam is divided into 27 administrative districts. These districts are further sub-divided into 49 “Sub-divisions” or Mohkuma. Every district is administered from a district head quarter with the office of the Deputy Commissioner, District Magistrate, Office of the District Panchayat and usually with a district court.
The districts are delineated on the basis of the features such as the rivers, hills, forests, etc. and majority of the newly constituted districts are sub-divisions of the earlier districts.
The local governance system is organised under the jila-parishad (District Panchayat) for a district, panchayat for group of or individual rural areas and under the urban local bodies for the towns and cities. Presently there are 2489 village panchayats covering 26247 villages in Assam. The ‘town-committee’ or nagar-somiti for small towns, ‘municipal board’ or pouro-sobha for medium towns and municipal corporation or pouro-nigom for the cities consist of the urban local bodies. Assam has two big cities. Largest City is Guwahati and other major cities are Dibrugarh, Jorhat, Silchar and Nagaon. Smaller cities are Tezpur, Tinsukia, Sivasagar, Dhubri etc. For the revenue purposes, the districts are divided into revenue circles and mouzas; for the development projects, the districts are divided into 219 ‘development-blocks’ and for law and order these are divided into 206 police stations or thana.
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