Parliament digitises 4.2mn pages of history

Aditi Tandon
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, July 12

The Parliament of India has digitized a whopping 4.2 million pages of historical records dating back to 1854 in a move that will expand the understanding of legislative and parliamentary evolution.

The archives not only contain proceedings after the first Lok Sabha was constituted in 1952, they also feature debates between 1854 and 1952 to show how legislative reforms developed overtime.

House evolution

The treasure trove contains historical debates that explain the evolution of Parliament and of many legislations.

The 99-year period is captured in a range of documented proceedings including The Indian legislative Council Debates which feature proceedings of the Legislative Council from 1854 to 1920. There are complete records leading to the passage of The Government of India Act of 1919, which gave effect to the Montague Chelmsford Reforms and established a bicameral Legislature at the Centre.

“The Indian Legislature consisted of the Governor-General and the two Houses at that time – the Council of State and the Legislative Assembly. The debates of various sessions of the Council of State held from 1921 to 1946 and six Legislative Assemblies from 1921 to 1947 are included in the digital library. All the documents have been digitized including from the period before the first War of Independence in 1857 when the East India Company ran the affairs of the country based on charters from the Queen and also post 1857,” LS secretary general Utpal Kumar Singh said.

The treasure trove covers the period that saw the replacement of the above two houses with the Constituent Assembly of India. The proceedings of the Constituent Assembly’s six sessions from 17 November 1947 to 24 December 1949 have been included. The Constituent Assembly later became the Provisional Parliament and exercised the powers of the two Houses of Parliament until the First General Elections were held in 1952 and the Lok Sabha was constituted.

The digitized space consists of the Provisional Parliament Debates from 28 January 1950 to 5 March 1952, covering 276 days and shows how modern Indian democratic institutions took shape. The digital records allow an insight into the evolution of major legislations including the law offence of sedition.

The November 25, 1870 debate on the subject of sedition contained under the head –The Proceedings of the Governor General of India Laws — justifies the law as follows, “By some means …the Indian Penal Code contained no section by which you could punish conspiracies to wage war against the Queen or deprive her of the sovereignty of British India, unless the conspiracy proceeded so far as to be followed by open or actual preparations for rebellion. Besides this, the Code contained no provision with respect to exciting disaffection by speaking or writing, and that was a great defect and one which ought not to be permitted to exist in any rational system of criminal law whatsoever.”