QUESTION

(a) whether all documents, images, videos, files, etc., under the custody of National Archives have
been digitised, if so, the details of the types and volume of the digitised data;

(b) whether these files have been made freely available for access to the public through web portal, if
so, details thereof, if not, whether Government will consider making some crucial records
available for free, such as, emergency era records, etc.; and

(c) whether Government plans to integrate cutting edge technology, such as, AR/VR/AI for
enhancing the search and viewing experience for the public at large?

ANSWER

MINISTER OF CULTURE AND TOURISM (GAJENDRA SINGH SHEKHAWAT)

(a) National Archives of India (NAI) has already completed Phase I of digitization of 4.5 crore pages of its records in last three years. In 2024, NAI has initiated another project for digitization of 30 crore pages (tentatively) of all its record holdings at present, in a span of two years.
Digitized scanned documents are in the format of Portable Document Format for Archival (PDFA), Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG), and Tagged Image File Format (TIFF). Digitized documents in PDF- A are uploaded on the centralized portal hosted on Hot Cloud Storage and PDF-A, JPEG, and TIFF are also stored on Archival Cloud Storage. One copy is stored on Linear Tape Operation (LTO) as backup.

(b) All digitized documents are available freely for access to the public on the search portal https://www.abhilekh-patal.in. The said portal has had Unique Visitors- 1,87,031, Website Hits- 13,86,833, Registered Users- 28,199, Reference Media- 39,81,383, Digitized Records- 5,92,279, Digitized Pages3,38,18,191 at present.

(c) In future versions of the search portal i.e. https://www.abhilekh-patal.in, NAI would explore the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and other latest technology available from time to time for enhancing the search and viewing experience for the public at large.