Nearly five lakh property registered document copies from 1927 to 1985, currently stored as photo films, will soon be digitalised.A proposal for this will be sent to the government after discussion with technical experts, stated Inspector General of Registration and Stamps (IGR) Shravan Hardikar.
The documents from 1985 to 2002 have been scanned and can be easily digitised, but the process to digitise documents from photo films needs to be undertaken with the help of technical experts, he said.
With the oldest property documents registered for almost 58 years stored as photo films, the registration department feels that these photo films should also be digitised as has been done with other documents post 2002. “These are all stored as photo films and we are consulting various experts on how we can digitise these documents for a larger shelf life,” said IGR Hardikar.
A property registration department official said, “There are many documents, which could not be saved because back then they were written down in huge registers. We have stored these films in containers in AC rooms.”
Meanwhile, deputy IGR IT S Mapari, who has been looking after documents from 1985-2002, said the process of scanning all documents is close to completion. These documents can be digitised at the earliest. With nearly 26 lakh documents during this period, nearly 96% work has been completed, he added
On the proposal of digitising all these records, he said that effort is on to upgrade the technology. “We moved first from paper to films and then to scanning the copies. Now, we are aiming to make the entire process digital. We want to eventually make it all web based. Discussions are on with various consultants for the same,” said Mapari.