OFFICIAL COMMUNICATION AND RECORD KEEPING

Handling of Official Papers

It is the duty of every member of the staff to protect official papers from rough or careless handling and to keep them in good condition. This rule also applies to the care and handling of other Government property.

Acknowledgement of Dak

The clerk should acknowledge receipt of all types of dak delivered by hand giving his full signature, designation and date of receipt. He will also receive all communications intended for the office and pass them on immediately to the officer incharge. All covers, sealed or addressed to officer by name should be sent unopened to the officer who should open it himself or a member of his staff authorized by him in writing.

File

All the communication in an office regarding actions on different cases is done on files. Ordinarily every file shall consist of two distinct parts:-

(i) the correspondence part; and

(ii) the Notes or Noting part.

Correspondence part includes the receipts, drafts of letters and the office copies of the communications made with reference to the case. For the correspondence part of the file, the thick card-board covers bearing two punched holes shall, if available be used and for the noting file the thinner folded file covers shall be used. The subject and number of each file shall be written on both the file covers or typed on slips and pasted on them.

All pages of the correspondence part of the file should be serially numbered. The odd page number should be written on the right hand top corner of the page while the even numbers should appear on the top left hand corner on the reverse. The numbers should be written clearly and legibly and if numbering has to be changed due to error or interpolation of some material, the original serial number should not be crossed or over-written but simply scored out by a line drawn across it and the new number written thereunder.

Each communication in the correspondence file should be properly cross-referenced to facilitate prompt reference to the connected documents.

The latest communication on which action is being taken shall also be placed on the correspondence file at the end and page-numbered. It may also be flagged with a ‘PUC’ (Paper Under Consideration) label and referred to in the Notes file as “PUC at page–/C”. Reference to correspondence shall always be made page-wise as “R13-14/C”, etc.

Noting is an internal processing of the case. The noting sheets in the Notes file shall be tagged inside the file cover at the left hand top corner so that it becomes possible to fold them backward and bring the last portion of the notes on top. The Notes file should not be page-numbered. It shall be serially paragraph-numbered continuously from beginning to end. References to Notes shall always be made paragraph-wise, “as para 19/N”, etc.

 

 

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