Early Times Report
Jammu, June 26: The historic Ranbir Library of this winter capital has lost over 2700 precious books in a decade, a RTI activist here today said. Data received under RTI Act has revealed that how does the Treasure of rare books from the kitty of the Jammus historic Shri Ranbir Singh Library is vanishing and the authorities there remain inattentive, RTI Activist Raman Sharma here said. He said that if analysed, data exposed that at least 5 books go missing in a week's time from the SRS Library. Information in response to an application under Jammu and Kashmir Right to Information Act 2009 from the office of Deputy Director Libraries Jammu disclosed that during the last 10 years, 2400 books have been damaged in the SRS library and 327 books borrowed by its members have not been returned yet, he added. In the communication letter the Deputy Director in response to the applicants query on whether any action is being taken against the defaulters, the officer has admitted that no action is taken against any defaulting member, neither their membership suspended nor cancelled, said the Activist. He added that the books swindled by the members include very rare books on different subjects including legal, spiritual, religious, academic, historic, health, political, culture and art written by local, national and international authors like George Morrow, Khushwant Singh, Jawahar Lal Nehru and Prof Bhim Singh. The defaulters have also taken away the Hindi, Urdu, Dogri and Kashmiri Poetry books of famous poets of Jammu and Kashmir, he maintained, adding that many books on the religious history of Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh regions have also gone missing from this old Library. Though the estimated cost of these 327 books as told by the department is Rs 70,510 but in fact many books still in the possession of defaulters are priceless as there are some books whose other copy or edition is not available in the market, Mr Sharma said. Pertinent to mention here that as per the rule book of the SRS library, a member has to return a borrowed book to the library within 14 days but list of defaulters shows that some of them taken the book in Feb 2005 but till date the books have not been returned. |
