TN Registration Department to Digitise Crores of Records Dating Back to 1865

The Tamil Nadu Registration Department is set to digitise a massive archive of historical records in Chennai and across the state, covering property documents dating back to 1865 alongside birth and death registers up to 2018.

The department has invited tenders for scanning, digitisation, meta-tagging, and indexing of the records. The project involves scanning 11.14 crore pages of unscanned records and converting 7.06 crore old Encumbrance Certificate and Index-2 records from 1865 to 1974 into searchable data. In addition, around 5.68 crore birth and death records registered up to 2018 will be digitised.

Officials stated that 2,22,90,271 documents registered between January 1, 1865, and July 5, 2009, were left unscanned during earlier exercises. In 2019, the department digitised 10 crore records from that period, but the initiative was halted due to the Covid-19 pandemic and other constraints. While encumbrance certificates from 1975 onward have already been converted to digital formats and digitisation became a regular practice in 2009, the current drive will address the remaining backlog without re-scanning previously processed documents.

Under the tender guidelines, physical scanning of original records must take place strictly inside the respective Sub-Registrar Office premises. No documents will be permitted to leave the offices. Scanning will run from 8am to 8pm, Monday through Friday, with the top 100 offices by document volume operating on Saturdays as well.

To meet the daily goal of processing four lakh records, vendors must deploy at least 2,000 data-entry operators across two working shifts. Project progress will be tracked through a centralised dashboard, with penalties imposed for missed targets. The department has established a 14-month timeframe to complete the final database.

The digitisation workflow will feature AI-assisted verification, using optical character recognition to cross-reference keyed data against scanned pages and automatically flag discrepancies. Reviewing officials or sub-registrars will retain final verification authority.

Strict security protocols will be enforced during the project. Workstation USB ports will be disabled, and scanning operators, Sub-Registrars, District Registrars, and Deputy Inspectors General will be required to log in using biometric authentication to maintain an audit trail of every scanned and verified document.