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It is a custodian of the non-current records of enduring value of the Government of India. It holds them in trust for the use of administrators and scholars.
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It is an Attached Office under Union Ministry of Culture.
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It was established as ‘Imperial Record Department’ on 11 March 1891 at Kolkata (then Calcutta).
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Following the transfer of capital from Calcutta to Delhi in 1911, the present building of National Archives of India was constructed in 1926.
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The New Delhi’s building was designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens.
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All records stored were completely transferred from Calcutta to New Delhi in 1937.
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The genesis of National Archives of India can be traced to the report of Sandeman, the Civil Auditor who had stressed the need of relieving the offices of congestion by the destruction of the papers of routine nature and transfer of all valuable records to a ‘Grand Central Archive’.
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This led to the establishment of Imperial Records Department (IRD) on 11 March 1891 in the Imperial Secretariat Building at Calcutta (Kolkata).
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In 1911 the IRD was shifted to Delhi. After the Independence, the government of India rechristened IRD as the National Archives of India with Director of Archives as its head and in the year 1990 the office of the Director of Archives was re-designated as Director General of Archives.
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It has a Regional Office at Bhopal and three Records Centres at Jaipur, Puducherry and Bhubaneswar.