CM Naveen Patnaik lays foundation stone of Centre for Judicial Archives

CUTTACK: Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on Saturday hailed Orissa High Court’s Centre for Judicial Archives as a unique project which will preserve the judicial history of the state.Laying the foundation of the project, Patnaik said the first-of-its-kind initiative will preserve over 50,000 archival records of both high court and district courts which are a treasure in the legal arena.

“The project will be immensely beneficial to all the historians and the legal luminaries for a meaningful reconstruction of history,” Patnaik said.“Archives not only collect the documentary evidence of a nation but also the collective memory of the institution and a passive witness to history. By embarking upon the project, the Orissa High Court has done a commendable job for preserving the judicial history and promoting judicial heritage of Odisha,” the chief minister said.

The objective of the `24 crore project is documentation of the judicial history of Odisha by facilitating research on the century-old judicial records. The ground work started a year ago. The project is headed by a director-cum-OSD of archives having experience in the preservation and retrieval of old records. He is being assisted by a law consultant and two law researchers apart from two law interns. It has also been planned to come up record room digitisation centre, one km away from the high court building.

In his address, Chief Justice S Muralidhar said the project was born during his visits to the record rooms of the high court and the district courts. He said in Ganjam he came across a wonderfully preserved stack of documents dating back to 1814.

“That suggested there were other very old important documents in the court record rooms that need to be preserved and digitised to make them available for research. Consequently, the project took form”, he said.
The Centre for Judicial Archives will be a wonderful resource for historians, sociologists and anyone interested in studying the evolution of legal system not only in Odisha, but also rest of India, Chief Justice Muralidhar added.

The CM also laid the foundation stone of the high court employees residential complex which will constitute of 550 quarters sprawling over a 10 acre area at Sector 13 of CDA.Among others, Judge of Supreme Court Justice Vineet Saran attended the event. Justice Debabrata Dash and Justice S K Panigrahi  (both judges of Orissa High Court) delivered the welcome address and proposed vote of thanks respectively.