UP Board records to go digital, proposal ready for state govt

ALLAHABAD: In view of deteriorating condition of its nine-decadeold records, the world’s largest examining body, UP Board, is all set to digitalise its papers.

Established in 1921, the board has been conducting examinations of high school and intermediate since 1923 but its record room presents a sorry picture.

Dumped in large sacks, records spanning over nine decades of board’s existence are presently biting the dust.

For saving the same from getting destroyed completely and also easy access in time of need, the top brass of the board in its high-level meeting held recently, under the chairmanship of its director Amarnath Verma, decided to get the same digitalised. Talking to Hindustan Times, UP Board secretary Shail Yadav said, “The decision was taken in the meeting and a proposal for the same is being prepared to be forwarded to the state government for approval.”

The records would be scanned and stored in digital format. After the proposal is approved and budgetary allocation made, agency for digitising the records would be appointed, Yadav said. “It is time that the priceless records of the board were saved or the same would be lost forever,” Yadav added.

In the first phase, the board has decided to digitise records from 1960 to 1980 followed by digitisation of records from 1980 to 2000 in the second phase. From 2000 onwards, the board has already got the details of examinees computerised.

It may be mentioned that after digitalisation of records, tampering of the same would not be possible. Last year, in Allahabad regional office of the board, tampering of records was detected and a case is still under investigation.