What is Abhilekh Patal?

April 22, 2023

Recently, The Prime Minister of India praised “Abhilekh Patal” a portal with over 1 Crore Pages of Historical Records of the National Archives.

About Abhilekh Patal:

  • What it is? It is a full-featured web portal to access the National Archives of India’s reference media and its digitized collections through the Internet.
  • Abhilekh is a Sanskrit term used in India for records since ancient times and Patalis a Sanskrit word meaning a board, platform, or surface.
  • A combination of both these words has been adopted as an acronym for Portal for Access to Archives and Learning.

Key facts about the National Archives of India

  • It was established on 11 March 1891 at Calcutta (Kolkata) as the Imperial Record Department, it is the biggest archival repository in South Asia.
  • It is the repository of the non-current records of the Government of India and is holding them in trust for the use of record creators and general users.
  • It has a vast corpus of records viz., public records, private papers, oriental records, cartographic records and microfilms, which constitute an invaluable source of information for scholars-administrators and users of archives.
  • It is Located at the heart of New Delhi
  • It has one Regional Office in Bhopal and three Records Centres at Bhubaneswar, Jaipur and Puducherry.
  • Nodal Ministry: It is an Attached Office of the Ministry of Culture, Government of India.