Tamil Nadu sanctions 109 additional posts for handling Kalaignar Magalir Urimai Thittam

The State government has sanctioned 109 additional posts of revenue officials, mainly to handle the volume of work involved in Kalaignar Magalir Urimai Thittam (KMUT), one of the government’s flagship schemes providing a monthly “rights grant” of ₹1,000 to eligible women heads of families.

According to the Government Order issued in this regard on Tuesday by the Revenue and Disaster Management Department, the government has sanctioned these posts against the 323 additional posts requested by the Commissioner (Social Security Schemes), who is the implementing authority for the scheme.

The 109 posts, which will cost the government an additional annual expenditure of around ₹9 crore in salaries, includes 94 Deputy Tahsildars (DTs) in each of the 94 revenue subdivisions in the State, eight Special Tahsildars (STs) for Social Security Schemes (SSS) in eight recently formed taluks where this post has not been created so far, and seven more DTs in seven taluks where no posts of Zonal DTs have been sanctioned so far.

While the 94 DTs have been sanctioned at the subdivision level exclusively for KMUT, officials in the other sanctioned posts will work on all SSS and other revenue related work, sources in the government said.

The request raised for these posts, which was cited in the G.O., said additional staff were required especially to handle the “enormous work” involved in processing the roughly 11.85 lakh appeals received from “aggrieved applicants,” who wanted their inclusion in the scheme that is currently catering to 1.06 crore beneficiaries.

Of the 323 requested posts, those that were not sanctioned included 38 DTs in all 38 district Collectorates to handle grievances and monitoring of additions, deletions, and modifications involved in the scheme. They also included 32 DTs in taluks located in hilly areas to cater to the widely scattered population there, 53 DTs in taluks in Municipal Corporation areas with huge population, and 91 DTs in taluks where the number of beneficiaries were high.

Highlighting that the association has been requesting for these additional posts for the past few months, Tamil Nadu Revenue Officials’ Association (TNROA) president M.P. Murugaiyan thanked Chief Minister M.K. Stalin and other Ministers and senior officials on the association’s behalf for sanctioning these posts. He said this wiould enhance the smooth implementation of KMUT further. The association appealed to the government to consider its demand for additional posts for disaster management and relief in coastal villages.