NEW DELHI: All India Radio (AIR), which commenced digitisation of its archival material in 2001, has so far accomplished digitisation of 1,39,000 hours of recordings.

These include 19,000 hours from AIR Central Archives. AIR digitised material include archival records of Mahatma Gandhi, Sardar Patel, Dr. B R Ambedkar, Maulana Azad, Netaji Subash Chandra Bose, Dr. Rajendra Prasad and many other national leaders.

Prasar Bharati sources said, in view of the huge volume of work, there are plans to outsource the digitisation process, and has issued an Expression of Interest (EOI) calling for applications from private entities for digitisation of its archival / legacy programmes.

Selected Archival recordings of AIR are regularly being uploaded on YouTube, which is accessible to the people through the mobile specific user interface of YouTube.

AIR was given funds up to Rs 3.94 crore in the 11th Plan, of which it utilised Rs 3,84 crore, and Rs 2.3 crore in the 12th Plan of which remained unutilised till October 2014.

Apart from the budgetary allocations, AIR also had Rs 50 lakh from Internal Extra Budgetary Resources (IEBR) of Prasar Bharati in 2010-11 of which Rs 15 lakh was utilised; Rs 52 lakh in 2011-12, of which Rs 27 lakh was utilized; Rs 1.03 crore in 2012-13 of which Rs 55 lakh was utilised; and Rs 8.59 crore in 2013-14 of which Rs 3.89 crore was used.