Treasure trove of Parliament proceedings from 1854 available online

Lok Sabha has bet big on digitisation by making available legislative council proceedings dating back to 1854 online for researchers and history buffs and soon plans to roll out a special mobile app for members to keep track of parliamentary proceedings.

Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla said proceedings of the first meeting of the Legislative Council of India, held on May 20, 1854, and the subsequent years that trace the evolution of parliamentary democracy in the country have been made available on the website of the parliamentary library.

Lok Sabha secretariat officials said the total pages available online exceed 40 lakh and almost every page available of parliament proceedings has been scanned, indexed and uploaded on a dedicated website www.eparlib.nic.in.

“It took almost five years to digitize these documents to place them on this portal which acts more like a search engine. There are more than 4.2 lakh documents comprising nearly 45 lakh pages,” a senior Lok Sabha official said.

Birla said a meta-data search was now possible for the proceedings of the 11th Lok Sabha to the 17th Lok Sabha and efforts were on to make a similar search facility available for the proceedings of the first Lok Sabha to the 10th Lok Sabha.

The Speaker said a special mobile app was being developed for members to access parliament papers, debates, question hour submissions and even live-streaming of proceedings.

“This app will be a one-stop solution for all matters related to Parliament,” he said.

A senior Lok Sabha officer said a beta version of the app would be available by next month for use to members and later for the general public.

Plans were also afoot to link the libraries of Parliament and that of state assemblies to ensure seamless access to debates for members as well as researchers.