New Muban, new municipality

I have neglected the blog for the past half year - kept myself busy with some other projects on Wikidata, but also not much happened with the subdivisions lately as politics was apparently preoccupied with the general election and coronation. Another reason which made it more difficult to keep up with the news is the fact that my automatic search within the Royal Gazette for interesting new announcements strangely fails most of the time, so i fact I did miss one change to report. And as before, the municipal changes from law.moi.go.th are still hardly accessible, the strange routing problem persists for several years already.

The following municipal changes were in discussion, and are now probably awaiting to be officially announced in the Royal Gazette.

• Ban Klang TAO (องค์การบริหารส่วนตำบลบ้านกลาง), San Pa Tong district, Chiang Mai province, to be renamed to Wiang Tha Kham (องค์การบริหารส่วนตำบลเวียงท่ากาน). [Meeting 24/2562]
• Kut Wa TAO (องค์การบริหารส่วนตำบลกุดหว้า), Kuchinarai district, Kalasin province, to be renamed to Na Khrai TAO (องค์การบริหารส่วนตำบลนาไคร้) [Meeting 27/2562]
• Bua Khao town (เทศบาลเมืองบัวขาว), Kuchinarai district, Kalasin province, to be renamed to Kuchinarai town (เทศบาลเมืองกุฉินารายณ์) [Meeting 27/2562]
• Sam Khwai Phueak TAO (องค์การบริหารส่วนตำบลสามควายเผือก), Mueang Nakhon Pathom district, Nakhon Pathom province, to be upgraded to a town (เทศบาลเมืองสามควายเผือก) [Meeting 27/2562]
• Rua Yai TAO (องค์การบริหารส่วนตำบลรั้วใหญ่), Mueang Suphanburi district, Suphanburi province, to be upgraded to a subdistrict municipality (เทศบาลตำบลรั้วใหญ่) [Meeting 29/2562]
• Khae Rai TAO (องค์การบริหารส่วนตำบลแคราย), Krathum Baen district, Samut Sakhon province, to be upgraded to a subdistrict municipality (เทศบาลตำบลแคราย) [Meeting 29/2562]

Additionally, the creation of one new administrative village (Muban) was announced - Mu 20 of Chiang Yuen subdistrict, Mueang Udon Thani district, Udon Thani province was created by splitting of area from Mu 1. The new village also got the same name as Mu 1 - Ban Chiang Yuen (บ้านเชียงยืน) [Gazette]. In a second announcement, the boundaries of Mu 1 and 14 were also adjusted [Gazette]. What is a bit odd at this new village is the fact that Mu 21 was already created in 2016, but the number 20 was not used at that time. I can only suspect that this new village was already planned at that time, but it took another 3 years to settle the boundary details and make the new village official.

Number of administrative units 2018

The Department of Provincial Administration has published the latest statistics of the numbers of administrative units in Thailand, as of December 31st 2018. The numbers are as follows, with the 2017 numbers in brackets if there were changes.

• Changwat: 76
• Amphoe: 878
• Tambon: 7255
• Muban: 75032
• PAO: 76
• Thesaban: 2442 (2441)
  • Thesaban Nakhon: 30
  • Thesaban Mueang: 179 (178)
  • Thesaban Tambon: 2233
• TAO: 5332 (5333)
• Special administrative units: 2

There is only one change recorded, an upgrade of a TAO to a town municipality - which is the upgrade of Bang Khu Rat in Nonthaburi province. I haven't yet reported it on here, and in fact it was effective January 2nd 2019, so claiming the numbers are as of December 31st is not fully correct. As all other numbers stayed identical, it only shows that currently there's almost no activity concerning the administrative units. And as usual, there is still the odd discrepancy of one subdistrict which is not counted in this statistics, but still included in the population data.

One interested side-note - this year the document includes an English version, which I haven't seen before.