Andhra Govt names experts committee for new archives system

Vijayawada: The state government has appointed a five-member expert committee to prepare guidelines for setting up a new archival system for Andhra Pradesh. The experts have a proven track record in archival policies.

The committee will meet in Amaravati next week, for an initial dialogue with a government committee consisting of senior IAS officers, Dr Nagulapalli Sreekanth, Manmohan Singh and  Finance Secretary M. Ravichandra.

The panel will be given up to three months to submit its report to the government. Maintaining records in the state has been on since the time of the Mughals and were part of Mughal Central Governor’s archives kept at Qila-e-Arak in Aurangabad.

Aurangzeb (1658-1707) spent the last 30 years of his reign in the Deccan, with Aurangabad his defacto capital.

Mughal ‘daftars’ were established by Aurangzeb in Aurangabad. One of them, set up in the Qila-e-Ark in 1695 A.D. was the precursor of Daftar-e-Diwani.

The Andhra Pradesh State Archives and Research Institute was established in the year 1893-94 A.D when the entire records of the ‘Daftar-i-Diwani’ in one of the fourteen old Daftars (Administrative offices) were created around the year 1721 and held on a hereditary basis.

Among the ‘Daftars’, the most important was ‘Daftar-i-Diwani’ which was looked after by Rai Rayan in 1894. 

All records of the Daftar-i-Diwani and other daftars were taken over by the Nizam government and they named it  Daftar-i-Diwani.

The Daftar-i-Diwani in 1924 was raised to the Status of Directorate. functioning from the Hyderabad Secretariat Building.

Daftar-i-Diwani, the Directorate, was renamed the  Central Record Office on December 14, 1950, and functioned in Errammanzil, a private residence of the  Nawab Fakhr-ul-Mulk.

The Department of the Central Record Office was renamed  State Archives on the model of the National Archives of India in 1962, functioning on its own. The building was constructed on similar lines to the Archival set up and its administration, in the Osmania University Campus on a five acre (2.02 Sectors) site which was leased by Osmania University and was occupied in October, 1965.

Now, according to the AP government, the entire archive system will be revived,while protecting the earlier ones. “The expert commitee is expected to elicit the complete details — right from the shifting of records of Archival value from erstwhile Madras to Andhra,” explained Dr Nagulapalli Sreekanth, Principal Secretary (GAD). Additions and deletions which were made during the British regime will also be examined.