NEW DELHI: The Indian bureaucracy is working overtime to despose of its moth-eaten and irrelevant files. In three weeks flat, the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances got rid of files which, in real estate terms, would occupy 37.19 lakh sq ft or 84.94 acres. Now, that is more than twice the area on which the Taj Mahal rests.
“Come to think of it, the Rashtrapati Bhavan building is spread over just 400,000 sq ft or 9.18 acres,” quipped DARPG Secretary V Srinivas, adding the government is on mission mode to weed out hundreds of thousands of files, which would otherwise occupy as much as 50 lakh sq ft of space, in the next few weeks.
Srinivas said care was taken to preserve some valuable colonial-era files and reports that dealt with public administration, secretariat reorganisation, staffing of government offices, retirement of European officers and remedial measures taken to cover for the loss of personnel as a consequence of Partition. “Some reports date back to Partition... There are gems in which Indian clerks complained against Indian Civil Service officers,” he told this paper. These have been sent to the National Archives, clarified Union minister Jitendra Singh.
As part of the campaign, the posal department freed up space in 17,767 post offices, the rail ministry in 7,028 stations, the Department of Pharmaceuticals on 5,974 sites, the defence ministry on 4,578, and the home ministry on 4,896 sites.