If you want to access old land records, transactions that date back from 1800s during the Nizam’s era of the erstwhile Hyderabad state, there is no need go through reams of old paper, which threaten to crumble with a touch.
In a novel project, Stamps and Registration department has digitised close to 6,000 volumes, amounting to a whopping four lakh land documents in Hyderabad. Emboldened by the success of digitisation project, the department is about to begin an endeavour of recording all old land transactions in Telangana for posterity.
By a rough estimate, the 10 districts will have over 10,000 volumes of more than 10 lakh documents, which have to be digitised and protected from vagaries of time. Almost all land documents in 1800s and most of 1900s were recorded on paper and storage and protection of these documents has been a major challenge for the department. Storing such huge quantities of paper, containing transactions worth crores, is never easy.
Over the years, the challenge to protect these documents has grown tougher with the rise of claimants and litigation. Barring a few, none of sub-registrar offices in Telangana have their own building. All of them are operated out of rented buildings and frequent shifting poses a threat to the integrity of old documents.
“Earlier, books were used to document land deals. They were written in ink and carefully bounded. But paper and ink are destructible. There is no dearth of families and courts seeking our help to validate old land documents and digitisation has become inevitable,” says Deputy Inspector General (DIG), Stamps and Registration, Vemula Srinivasulu.
A few years ago, as a pilot project, he took up the arduous task of collecting all the old documents in Hyderabad to digitise them. A team of experts were roped-in and huge copying and scanning machines were used to scan the old documents and save them in a central server.
“We have completed the Hyderabad phase and now the time is ripe to take up digitisation throughout Telangana. We have approached Government of India seeking funding help,” Mr. Srinivasulu added.
