PANAJI: The records of the Goa Legislative Assembly from 1963, when the House had its prime session, till the year 2000 were destroyed during the re-location of the secretariat, Goa Chief Minister Pramod Sawant said.
"I desired to preserve them. They were nonetheless destroyed. I apologise; this shouldn't have happened. Since 2000, we have been maintaining the records, and their digitization is currently underway," Sawant said addressing a gathering on Monday.
He claimed that the Goa Assembly's first meeting took place in 1963. He said that when the secretariat was moved from the Adil Shah Palace building to the new complex in 2000, the original records of the Assembly proceedings, including remarks by Goa's first chief minister Dayanand Bandodkar, were destroyed.
"I had intentions to digitally preserve them (records) using CDs and other media so that fresh MLAs might use them in the future." Unfortunately, the records were deleted during the secretariat move," the CM said. He added that he learned that these records had been deleted when he was elected speaker of the Goa Assembly.
There has been a Goa Assembly since 1963. He pointed out that other assemblies utilise these references when discussing defections, governments lasting 15 or 13 days, etc. He opined that all documentation of the Assembly's proceedings should be digitalized.
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