Legacy of Raj: Digitisation of documents in British era record room starts

Built in 1860, the wood and fixtures of the facility were intact, but worms were eating through files

RAWALPINDI: Work to digitise the land record kept in over 150 year old record room at District Kutchery in Rawalpindi has started, official sources said.

The 158 year old record room of Judicial Complex is more like a crypt for land records of Rawalpindi and its surrounding areas.

Built to last in 1860, the during the British Raj, the room has record of more the 1.8 million judicial verdicts and land ownership.

In the first phase, judicial verdicts will be transferred to a new record room in the Judicial Complex.

Whereas the land records will stay in the room so it may be computerised.

Data entry operators hired for the purpose will computerise the records before shifting the century old files to new location.

The present record room of the Rawalpindi Land Revenue Office was built in 1860 by the order of a British Deputy Commissioner and a Hindu Magistrate.

The facility, keeping in view the Victorian standards, was built with very strong wood.

A steel railing installed one and a half century ago, was still intact in its place and could’ve easily stood there for another 100 years. The other iron and brass fixtures of doors and shelves have shown no sign of rust.

Since 1988, the in-charge of this room had been Raja Naseer.

He told Daily Express that the record room has ran out of space.

The shelves are full, piles of files have hit the ceiling and now new bundles are just dumped on the floor.

He said that these files can tell about the history of the region.

Who got how much land grant from the Colonial Masters for what services, it is all here, Naseer said.

The graveyard of the land record holds testimonies of the rise and fall of landed elite of the area that had contributed highest numbers of soldiers to the British India Army in the First World War.

However, in the past few decades, there has been an infestation in the record room, he said.

“Worms have eaten up many papers destroying historic records,” he said adding that the infestation has compelled the authorities to save the documents through digitisation.

In the first step, the 2017 and 2018 court records of property cases will be computerised and will be transferred to the session record room.

The entire record will be shifted within one month.

Finally, in the second phase, the records of all the properties will be computerised and saved.

 

Published in The Express Tribune, September 23^rd, 2018.