Hry mulls bringing in Bill for preserving both physical and digital records

With its focus on digitalisation of various kinds of physical official records, the Manohar Lal Khattar Government in Haryana is now preparing to bring in a bill with provisions to ensure the preservation and integrity of electronic records for a specific period.

As the Public Records Act, 1993 was enacted in a pre-digital age, the State Government has planned to introduce a state bill focusing on the preservation of both physical records and digital records.

While the government was earlier proposing to introduce Haryana State Public Records Bill for maintaining physical public records, the state cabinet in a meeting later decided to chalk out provisions related to electronic records as well in the Bill.

“The Public Records Act, 1993 deals with only physical public records. With all government departments adopting digitalization to improve the quality of work, we are chalking out provisions that can be introduced in the proposed state Bill to preserve and maintain both physical records and digital records in Haryana,” said a senior official of the State Government.

“Since the government’s focus is digitalization, there is a need to ensure smooth process of preserving e-records. Haryana Archives Department has been directed to explore the possibilities to add such provisions to the draft Bill. The state would be the first one to introduce such a Bill,” the official said.

The official added the government is exploring on how the e-records could be accessed, retrieved from various departments by Archives and could be retained for long durations, as per the followed procedure to maintain old records.

The proposed bill is significant as currently, there are no statutory regulations to preserve or maintain the old files in various establishments of the State Government.

While the government departments had been time and again asked to either submit or apprize the state Archives Department about the public records which are more than 25 years old, such directions are not followed and many old files go missing, misplaced, discarded or destroyed in various departments.

After assuming power in Haryana, the Manohar Lal Government had earlier planned to introduce State Public Records Bill, 2014 to regulate the management, administration and preservation of public records.

At that time, the decision was taken in the wake of reports of crucial pages of controversial Robert Vadra-DLF deal going missing from the State Government records.

However, the proposal to introduce the Bill was later postponed. The State Government has now decided to initiate the process again with the provisions in the Bill to preserve e-records as well.

According to the provisions of previous draft bill discussed by the state cabinet, no person shall be allowed to take any public records out of Haryana without prior approval of state government. And, whoever contravenes this provision shall be punishable with imprisonment for a term which may extend to five years or with fine which may extend to ten thousand rupees or with both, it stated.

Apart from this, the draft bill had proposed that no public record shall be destroyed or otherwise disposed of except in subject to few conditions. Once the bill is passed, the State Government would constitute an Archival Advisory Board to supervise on the matters concerning the administration, management, conservation and use of public records, it stated.