The Gorkhaland Territorial Administration is embracing e-governance to do away with the age-old bureaucratic practice of maintaining files, a system that was riddled with the problem of “missing files”.

Anit Thapa, the chairman, board of administrators, GTA, said in a written statement: “To promote transparency, convenience, efficiency, accountability, data security and data integrity in governance, we have decided to take steps to start moving towards the e-governance platform in all GTA offices.”

The Mamata Banerjee government has also embraced e-governance in most of its administrative wings.

Sources in the GTA said the e-office system had already started.

A GTA official said the hill body was not paying for digitisation. “It is a government-sponsored scheme and we are not paying for it. It is being executed by the National Informatics Centre and the Bengal government.”

The hill body annually receives around Rs 1,000 crore as plan, non-plan and sectoral funds which do not include amounts received for projects sponsored by the central government.

Since the days of the Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council to the present day of the GTA, there have always been innumerable complaints of files disappearing and at times reappearing out of thin air. “All files will now move online right from initiation to conclusion and everything will be tracked. There would be a complete stop on physical movements of files,” said a GTA official.

All GTA offices in Darjeeling and Kalimpong districts have been connected and the finance department will be acting as the resource centre.

“Earlier, files would go missing sometime while moving from say the Lewis Jubilee (GTA offices) or Kalimpong offices to Lal Khoti (administrative headquarters),” the official said.

While all new files are being digitised, GTA sources said they would also start digitising old records. “Files regarding works which have already been completed will also be digitised in the next phase,” said an official.

A supplier associated with the GTA welcomed the move.

“I have had the experience of files missing and then reappearing after repeated visits to various offices,” said the supplier, who suggested that such a system be introduced at civic bodies as well.