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Public Service Commissions.—Statutory Commissions entrusted with the task of recruitment to the Services and selection of officers for important posts have been constituted in all Unions. Wherever necessary officers with administrative experience and experience of working of Provincial Service Commissions have been made available to the Unions as Chairmen of their Commissions. Rules regulating the functions of these Commissions have been issued.
District Organisation.—The work of demarcating Divisions (wherever necessary), Districts and Talukas has now been completed in all the Unions. Saurashtra has been divided into 5 districts, Patiala and East Punjab States Union into 8 districts, Madhya Bharat into 3 divisions sub-divided into 16 districts in all, and Rajasthan into five divisions and 24 districts. The former Cochin State has been constituted into a District of the United State of Travancore and Cochin, the total number of districts for the entire Union being 4.
Boards of Revenue.—Boards of Revenue on the lines of similar bodies existing in some of the Provinces have been constituted in Madhya Bharat, Rajasthan and Travancore-Cochin. In Saurashtra a Revenue Tribunal on the lines of the Tribunal in Bombay functions as the highest Court of Appeal in revenue matters. As in the Punjab a Financial Commissioner (Revenue) functions as the highest revenue Court in Patiala and East Punjab States Union.
Agrarian Reforms.—Soon after the formation of the Unions, the respective Governments had to tackle the question of agrarian reforms. The systems of assessment and land tenures were different in the integrating States and with the advent of popular Governments in the Unions it was no longer possible to postpone the question of reforms. The problem was essentially the same in all the Unions, namely, that of conferment of permanent rights on cultivating tenants, but it took different shapes in different Unions according to the traditional system of land ownership and cultivation. There was, for example, the zamindari and jagirdari problem in Madhya Bharat and Rajasthan. The Central Government appointed a Fact Finding Committee to enquire into and report on the problem in these two Unions and to suggest remedies. The report submitted by this Committee is now being examined. In the Patiala arid East Punjab States Union a beginning was made by the issue of an Ordinance providing for the conferment of permanent right on certain classes of occupancy tenants. The method adopted in this Union was to divide the land between the occupancy tenant and the landlord in the ratio 3:1. The tenant has the
