The Union Culture Ministry has digitised 2.83 crore pages of 2.96 lakh manuscripts and published 44 rare manuscripts through its National Mission for Manuscripts project, Culture Minister Mahesh Sharma informed the Lok Sabha today.
The Union minister said the NMM mission has documented 43.16 lakh manuscripts and conserved 4.34 crore folios of manuscripts.
From the NMM's inception in 2003 to 31st March this year, an amount of Rs 96.66 crore was released by the Ministry of Culture and an amount of Rs 95.44 crore was spent. The manuscripts documented and digitised will be made available to researchers and scholars through a trusted digital repository, Sharma said.
He said the ultimate objective of the mission was to establish a digital manuscripts library at the premier government-funded arts organisation, Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, in which researchers and scholars could view and consult the manuscripts to understand the past in its totality.