Opinion | The state kept only one copy
Summary
Fires destroyed ledgers, court files and other government records in September, exposing how much of Nepal’s administration still depends on fragile paper archives. Officials say key systems survived through backup storage, but many offices still lack a reliable second copy of their records.
Key Points
- Records of 179 public bodies were destroyed in the September 8-9 protests, and about Rs148 billion in government transactions were left unaudited.
- Land records, company registry data and several government databases survived because they were backed up at the Integrated Data Management Centre in Singha Durbar and its recovery site in Hetauda.
- The Supreme Court lost roughly 20,000 pending case files and has been restoring them through notices and photocopies from litigants and lawyers.
- The article warns that Nepal still lacks a rule requiring district offices, ward offices and schools to store records in a separate place.
