Grappling with shortage of space, the Environment Ministry is in the process of digitising thousands of its records to overcome the problem.
"A large quantity of records are being produced on a daily basis due to which we are facing serious constraints in terms of space. A lot of difficulty is being faced in preserving the documents and their retrieval in times of need," a senior environment ministry official said.
Digitisation is being seen as a solution and the ministry has already invited tenders from the concerned parties to implement the project involving scanning lakhs of pages into electronic format.
The official said that presently all sections of the ministry headquarters at Paryavaran Bhawan were full of records while one wing of Vigyan Sadan at RK Puram has been converted into a record room for files pertaining to various divisions.
"Even then, files are piling up steadily in most of the corridors of the ministry's office resulting in acute shortage of space," he said, attributing the increased number of files to growing environment related cases.
Once digitised, processed files can be easily accessed through a search keyword.