The Telangana State Archives was previously known as Daftar-i- Diwani- Mal-o-Mulki established in 1724 A.D. Nizam’s Government of Hyderabad converted it into regular record office in 1893 A.D. Later, it became Central Record Office in 1950 subsequently it was renamed as State Archive in 1956 and the status of Research Institute was granted in 1962, and recognised as Research Institute by the Osmania University in 1992 A.D.

This Archives is one of the leading Archives of India and well known among the research fraternity all over the world with 43 million documents in its custody.

Earlier this Department was located in the portion of the Hyderabad State Secretariat building in which the Finance Department was accommodated. The Daftar-i-Diwani was housed in that building from the beginning till 1949 A.D. It moved to a portion of a grand and spacious building named Iram Manzil in 1949 A.D. which was formerly a private residence of Nawab-Fakhr-ul-Mulk, a leading Asaf Jahi noble.

The portion of Iram Manzil, occupied by this Department was insufficient to accommodate the records to be acquired in future. Hence a new building was constructed in the campus of Osmania University on a five acre site leased by the University. The foundation stone of this building was constructed in the campus of Osmania University. The foundation stone of this building was laid by Prof. Humayun Kabir, the then Union Minister for Education on 13 th September, 1963 A.D. When this building was completed it was inaugurated by Sri Lal Bahadur Shastri, the then Prime Minister of India on 6 th July, 1965 A.D. This new building which is located at Tarnaka within the premises of Osmania University campus was occupied by Andhra Pradesh State Archives in October, 1965 A.D.

This building is considered to be as one of the most modern Archival buildings in the country which has been constructed according to the basic principles of Archival Science. This building has a separate block of a large stack area in two floors, each measuring 210 feet X 75 feet to accommodate records measuring a linear space of 76,000 feet. The archives are organized by time period, with each floor dedicated to specific eras:

A) Repository 1 (R1): Houses records prior to 1948

B) Repository 2 (R2): Contains records from 1956 onwards

The stack area has been duly provided with coloured glasses to eliminate the harmful effect of sun rays. Steel almirahs and steel racks have been installed in the stack area for better preservation and safe custody of the records. Later compacting system has been installed in the record rooms and partly in stack area to prevent the records from fire, dust, theft and from enemies of records. The stack area has also been provided with fire fighting equipments and a fire alarm system as well. Apart from administrative block consisting of large halls this building has a reception room, archival museum, library, documentation cell, research room, computer unit, conservation and preservation laboratory, reprography unity, digitisation area , conference hall , etc. A new section of cartography is going to be set up soon.

Read More