Amid TN’s paperless drive, universities make huge spend on printing

CHENNAI: As the Tamil Nadu government is mooting paperless work in its offices, University of Madras tops the table for the printing charges to the tune of Rs 8 crore in 2022-2023.

Likewise, in the government departments and institutions, Directorate of Seed Certification and Rajiv Gandhi government hospital are at the top of the list with more than 50 lakh spent as charges for printing.

State owned Stationery and Printing, under the Tamil Development and Information Department, is carrying out various printing work for government departments and universities. Government gazettes, law codes and manuals, answer sheets, books, periodicals are the documents beings printed.

A senior official from Stationery and Printing directorate, seeking anonymity, told DT Next that in 2022, the state government had launched a scheme called Digital Office Tamil Nadu (DoTN) that introduced e-office which will create ‘paperless’ offices, allowing speedy disposal of files.

“However, still many departments including state-run universities widely use printed papers and documents for official purposes,” he said adding “the amount that was spent for printing has increased over years.” The officials added that the University of Madras had incurred Rs 8.64 crore as printing charges in 2022-2023 and Annamalai university came in second spot spending Rs 6.13 crore during the same period.

“The printing includes answer sheets, books and covers”, he said adding “University of Madras had printed 42.25 lakh answer sheets, which is also the highest among other institutions.

Stating that Anna University also incurred Rs 4.51 crore for printing purposes, the official claimed that seven state-run universities altogether had printing charges of Rs 22.50 crore in 2022-2023.

With regard to department-wise spending, he said though there was a plan to completely automise, Medical Department places the highest print order of 3.06 lakh forms and 1.19 lakh books, which is followed by Police Department, which ordered printing of 2.07 lakh forms, 4.28 lakh books and 44,000 covers in 2022-2023.

“Even the Directorate of Technical Education (DOTE) also got 1.30 lakh forms from the Printing and Stationery Department,” he said adding “the least number of 2,000 forms were printed for Department of Local Fund Audit.”

The official pointed out that Directorate of Seed Certification incurred the highest printing expense of Rs 69.17 lakh followed by Rajiv Gandhi government hospital, which had incurred Rs 52.42 lakh. “Total printing charges of Rs 2.791 crore has been earned from all the departments,” he said.