History of homes translated

The Municipal Corporation of Delhi would soon be translating and digitising these old building records written in Urdu, reports Neelam Pandey.

A treasure trove of over a century of Delhi's history of ancestral properties preserved in Urdu would soon be available to all in Hindi and English.

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The Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) would soon be translating and digitising these old building records written in Urdu. The civic agency is going to sign an Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with an agency, which would be carrying out the process of digitisation for MCD.

"We are in the process of signing an MoU with a firm to carry out the digitization and translation too. Pre-independence, all the records used to be in Urdu. We will have to appoint someone who is fluent in the language and we will be asking the company that will be selected to look into the requirement," said MCD commissioner K.S. Mehra.

The move is also good news for scores of relatives and kin fighting property disputes, especially in the old city areas, who are unable to interpret the century-old records.

Presently, the records of the building and town planning department would be translated and digitised. There are four record rooms in Town Hall--the current headquarter of the MCD, where the records are stored in bundles. "One of the record room is of 1950's and it has a lot of old records. We will be taking up these first for translation purpose," said a senior MCD official.

The civic agency is also not to keen to carry on with the baggage of paper files when it moves to its new premises at Civic Centre this year and has accelerated the pace of its e-governance towards paperless administration.

According to the civic body, Rs 10 crore has been earmarked for digitisation for the current financial year and Rs 65 crore worth of budgetary provisions have been made for the next financial year.