Centre For Judicial Archives, Odisha

Before setting up of the archives, there appears to have no catalogue of records either in the High Court or in the district courts. Since cataloguing of records is necessary for retrieval of information, the Centre has been making provisional catalogue of Fragile Records which includes the records of Sadr Dewani Adalat, Second Appeal, First Appeal, Civil Revision and High Court Museum etc. In the provisional catalogue, case no with date, name of the parties, no of pages, languages used and overall condition of records are mentioned which may be as good as check list of records.

The provisional cataloguing preludes the descriptive catalogue of records. Since the descriptive catalogue is necessary for a brief idea about the contents and subject matter of the records, this step has also been initiated recently with the engagement of Dr. Nadeem Akhtar, the visiting faculty member of Persian Department of Ashoka University, New Delhi who is preparing the catalogue of all Persian records. In this catalogue, a brief description of subject matter and the party in whose favor the decree is decided is also mentioned.This, being a continuing process, more judgments are being conserved and will be catalogued in this process.

The archives of Newspaper Articles as early as 1866 collected from different institutions and are digitized in the center. The Newspaper Articles are containing important events relating to erstwhile judiciary system in Odisha. The Newspaper Articles are from different newspaper publishing agencies including one of the earliest Odia newspaper, namely, Utkala Dipika.