State govt has no funds to digitise British-era files

Amaninder Pal

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, April 17

Uncertainty looms large over the ambitious project to digitise over 20 lakh pages of Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s administration (Khalsa Darbar) and the British period from 1857 to 1947 as the state Archives Department has no money to continue the project, at least for this year.

For the past several years, the department has been getting Rs50 lakh annual grant for the digitisation project. Eighty per cent of the assistance is provided by National Archives of India (NAI) and the remaining is contributed by the state government.

“Due to the delay in submission of some necessary documents to the NAI, the department couldn’t avail of grant required to carry on digitisation in the next fiscal. In this scenario, the state government will also not be able to contribute its matching share of 20 per cent of the total grant. Hence, the department has no money to continue the project,” said a senior officer, requesting anonymity.

The project to digitise lakhs of centuries-old manuscripts and official documents lying in the Punjab’s archives and libraries was started in 2013. The work is being executed by Chandigarh-based Punjab Digital Library.

In 2016, the experts roped in by the department were planning to digitise the Khalsa Darbar records and “category B” files of British period, all of which provide insight into home and administrative affairs of the British government from 1857 to 1947.

“We were planning to digitise over 20 lakh pages, including 2,500 bound volumes of Khalsa Darbar record. But there is the issue of funds this year. There are chances that we may accomplish just half of our set target, but we are committed to continue the work even without money”, said Devinder Singh, Executive Director, PDL.

Although the department has already prepared a microfilm of the Khalsa Darbar records, this year’s plan included to conserve durbar’s record in digital format.

Sources said the Centre had provided Rs50 lakh to the state Department of Culture for the digitisation of records related to monuments in Punjab.