PANJIM: Archives and Archaeology Minister Subhash Phaldessai on Tuesday disclosed plans to digitise land records housed with the Department of Archives and Archaeology.
The issue has come into focus after the truth hit home that many of the illegal and fraudulent sales of lands were affected by changing documents in the Archives and Archaeology Department.
Phaldessai said about six crore pages of land records will be digitised. He said that he had given this suggestion in 1992 as a computer professional to the then Archives Director, to digitise the records. Now that he is a Minister heading this department, he can execute his plans.
Pointing out many advantages of digitising records, the Minister said if any changes are made in the hard copy it can always be compared and checked with the soft copy if any changes are made.
He also pointed out that the hard copy becomes very brittle and in this case, only soft copies can be shown to the people.
He said in case the original records are destroyed in a flood, as happened with the department of archives some years ago or if there is a fire, the soft copy would still remain with the department.
Reacting to the cases of land grabbing cases and arrest of the accused, Phaldessai said that the present modus operandi was that papers are forged but with the Archives Department had digitised copies then they can always be compared and checked. The government will protect all these documents and digitalise.
