The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has often — and rightly — received much flak for losing important files and papers, especially those of the building proposal department, where plans of upcoming buildings in the city are submitted.

Now, the civic body seems to have found a solution — it proposes to upload all official papers online to back it up.
The BMC proposes a R65.17-crore-project to upload 10 crore papers by scanning and tagging them according to the subject to ensure that the 20,000 BMC officials can access it on their server.

The civic body says it will take them five years to complete the exercise. Additional Municipal Commissioner, SVR Srinivas, said, “This is an important proposal. The safety of these papers and files is under threat in case of an accident. It will take some time, but finding relevant files will be easier in the future.”

Rais Shaikh, Samajwadi Party group leader, however, believed that the amount submitted to the contractors is too large. “I hope the civic body carries out the exercise carefully and doesn’t lose important papers in the process,” he added.