Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Parliament Digital Library (PDL), hosted by the Lok Sabha Secretariat, provides information about various parliamentary documents of Lok Sabha.
PDL aims to create one window for all the information needs of the user on parliamentary documents of Lok Sabha.
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PDL has four major collections:
  1. Lok Sabha Debates
  2. Historical Debates
  3. Parliamentary Documents
  4. Publications
This collection provides text of debate of each day's sitting of various Lok Sabha from 1952 till date. The full text of debate of a specific date / session / Lok Sabha stored in pdf A form is viewable, downloadable and printable. The specific debate date can be searched in "yyyy-mm-dd" format in the search box, for eg. "1952-05-13".
"Debate by Titles/Members" collection allows the user to explore /search through significant parameters prepared and fed for each title in a day's proceedings covering question title, type (starred, starred-supplementary, unstarred, short notice question and members participation), and debate type including members participated. Any query will search data from both, Part I and Part II collectively, and also separately.
Under the collection Lok Sabha Debates, the sub collection Debate by Title/Member has two parts - Part 1- (Questions and Answers) and Part II- (Other than Questions and Answers).

Part 1 comprises of questions asked by Members of Parliament and answered by the concerned Ministers. The first Hour of a sitting of Lok Sabha is devoted to Questions and is called the Question Hour. For each sitting, 20 Starred (Oral) and 230 Unstarred (Written) Questions are listed and these can be explored title-wise, member-wise and through several other parameters.

Part-2 Other than Questions and Answers is the proceeding of a day and includes debate on Bills, discussion on urgent matters, Statements by Ministers, etc. which takes place after the Question Hour is over. These can be explored by Members, Lok Sabha Number, Debate Type, Title and Date.

A Starred Question is one to which a member desires an oral answer from the Minister in the House and is required to be distinguished by the member with an asterisk. Answer to such a question may be followed by supplementary questions by members. Unstarred questions are not called for oral answer in the House and no supplementary question can be asked thereon. The member in whose name the question stands ( first name) may ask two supplementary questions only and other members may ask one supplementary each, if permitted by the Chair. In the event of a Member being absent or does not want to ask the question, the Speaker may direct that the answer to the question be given and may allow other Members to ask supplementary questions thereon.
Such information may be searched from Lok Sabha Debates -> Debate by Titles/Members -> Part 1 Questions and Answers -> Question Type -> Starred Supplementary

Under "Text of Debates" collection, the debate, as printed in the book, of a specific date / session / Lok Sabha stored in pdf A form is displayed. The proceedings of a specific date from 11 am till the house adjourned that day makes it one single file.

"Debate by Titles/Members" collection displays metadata of Lok Sabha debates. Each day's debate has been split title wise to facilitate user to get information of specific member or question type or debate type, etc.

The following versions of Lok Sabha Debates are available in the portal:

Lok Sabha Number Version of Debates
1. Original
2. Original
3. Original
4. Original
5. Original
6. Original
7. Original
8. English
9. English
10. English
11. English
12. English
13. English
14. Original
15. Original
16. Original

The Hindi version of Lok Sabha Debates from 8th to 13th Lok Sabha have been digitized and will be uploaded shortly.

  • English version contains Lok Sabha proceedings in English and English translation of the proceedings which take place in Hindi or any regional language.
  • Hindi version in its present form except that Urdu speeches are being put in Devnagri script and their Persian script is also being given within brackets.
  • Original version contains the proceedings of the House in the languages in which they took place except that in the case of speeches made in regional languages, their English or Hindi translation was included and the Urdu speeches were put in Devnagri script and their Persian script was also given within brackets.

Three collections have been digitised:
  1. Presidential Addresses
  2. Budget Speeches
  3. Parliamentary Committee Reports
The Reports of 3 Financial Committees, 16 Departmentally Related Standing Committees of Lok Sabha, 13 Other Standing Committees, 5 Adhoc Committees and Joint Select Committees on Bills are placed here.
The journey of legislative bodies, tracing the history and evolution of parliamentary institutions in India, thereby covering the period of 95 years, from 1858 to 1952, will be part of this collection :
  1. Indian Legislative Council Debates (1858-1920)
  2. Central Legislative Assembly Debates (1921-1947)
  3. Council of State Debates (1921 to 1946 )
  4. Constituent Assembly of India (Draft Making 1946-1950)
  5. Constituent Assembly of India (Legislative) (1947-1949)
  6. Debates of Provisional Parliament (1950-1952)
Presently Constituent Assembly Debates (Draft Making-1946-1950), Constituent Assembly of India (Legislative) (1947-1949) and Debates of Provisional Parliament (1950-1952) have been uploaded. Other collections i.e Indian Legislative Council Debates (1858-1920), Central Legislative Assembly Debates (1921-1947) and Council of State Debates (1921 to 1946), are being uploaded on weekly basis.
The Lok Sabha Secretariat brings out publications from time to time for the information needs of the Members of Parliament. Some of important publications have been selected and digitised under this Collection and are categorised as follows:
  1. Books
  2. Information Bulletins
  3. Periodicals
By clicking 'Explore by', the user views various collections of portal by Member, Lok Sabha, Date, Ministry, Question Type, Debate Type, Committee Name, Title and Type.
Explore means to view the collections in a dictionary format in ascending/ descending order.
A user may write any word in the search box displayed at home page and portal will fetch results from all collections inclusively or separately.
A user gets broad results for any search query on the home page. However, the user may refine the search by choosing a particular collection and further refining through available combinations to get specific information.
Simple Search (without applying filter/s) gives broad results whereas in refine search, by applying various filters, user can get desired results more specifically & precisely.

Explore is to view the display of a collection in an organized manner. Further, it can be sorted by Lok Sabha number, date, title, member, type, etc. in ascending/ descending order in dictionary format.

Search on the other hand is finding instant results by putting any keyword in the search box from the entire database/ selective collection and further refining it to get specific results through various filter options.

Yes, by choosing to search from "All" on the search box at home page, the portal will fetch and display results from all the collections inclusively viz. Lok Sabha Debates, Historical Debates, Parliamentary Documents and Publications.
Yes, user has a choice to search from a specific collection exclusively.
Yes, the portal allows user to download the search results. However, the user cannot reproduce the same in any publication without prior permission of competent authority of Lok Sabha Secretariat.
Following quick search tips will help the user to search the query and produce results from the database more precisely.
  • You can do free search either from one collection or from all the collections of PDL.
  • You can have precise searching by putting quotes around text of your search, eg. "Road Transport".
  • For precise member's name "B.R. Ambedkar" or "Ambedkar".
  • For precise Date "13-05-1952".
  • Please ensure that there are no gaps in your text within quotes.
  • For more details, please see "User Guide"
No, search results are not affected with use of lower case or upper case. A search query written either in lower case or upper case will fetch the same results from the database.
Following formats of searching a particular date in inverted commas would fetch same results. Please see the following examples:
"dd.mm.yyyy"(13.05.1952), and "yyyy.mm.dd"(1952.05.13) would produce same results.
Also "dd-mm-yyyy" (13-05-1952) and "yyyy-mm-dd" (1952-05-13) would produce same results.
Even without inverted commas the results would be fetched inclusively.
A user may write any word in the search box displayed at home page and portal will fetch results from a single collection or from multiple collections. Search result can further be specified by applying filters of Title, Member, type, Question type, Debate type, Date, Lok Sabha Number, Committee name, Report Number, etc. Sample:
  • Suppose a user has query about Election Commission to be searched from all the collections. So, we type election commission in search box and it will give 8505 search results and discover feature on right side will display the collections wherein word(s) election commission or election or commission occurs. The user query can further be seen in filtered form in DISCOVER feature by title, date, Lok Sabha number, Committee name or debate type. The user can see one by one these results.
  • But to make a precise search, type the same search words within inverted quotes like "election commission" in search box and now only 1872 results appear which are in various collections as shown under type
A search query can be filtered through various filters of Title, Member, Type, Question Type, Debate Type, Date, Lok Sabha Number, Committee Name, Report Number, language etc. subject to specific collection. Filtered search saves the time of user by producing specific results.
Following example of finding earthquake and its various facets through database by application of various filters will help the user to apply filters in finding the precise information in minimum time.

    If we type earthquake in search box it will give 1748 results.

    Pl see following search, which with, more use of filters has reduced it from 1748 to 2.

In addition to the search results, the "Discover" feature, simultaneously sorts and filters the database on the input query entered by the user. The results displayed by the "Discover" feature may help the user in his/ her assignment/ search/ topics/ subjects to cull out the maximum results from the database on related parameters and that too in anticipation. Thus, this special feature of "Dspace" is very user friendly
As soon as user press the GO button in search box, "Discover" feature on the right hand side of the page depicts statistics of various parameters - Title, Members, Date, Lok Sabha Number, Committee Name, Debate Type, etc. Also, for any input query by the user, the "Discover" feature would anticipate and cull out all the related results from the database on the above parameters.
Metadata is simply data about data. It means it is a description and context of the data. It helps to organize, find and understand data. For example, in the collection "Text of Debates" title, type, date, Session, Lok Sabha number, language are examples of very basic metadata. Having the ability to filter through that metadata makes it much easier for someone to locate a specific document.
Digitization provides a means of preserving the content of the materials by creating an accessible image of the object in order to put less strain on already fragile originals.
To digitize something is to convert something from an analog into a digital format For eg. scanning a photograph and having a digital copy on a computer. This is essentially the first step in digital preservation.
To digitally preserve something is to maintain it over a long period of time.
Digitalization is the integration of digital technologies into everyday life. It also refers to the process of making digital everything that can be digitized and the process of converting information into digital format.
Dspce is an open source software platform that enables to distribute an organisation's digital assets over the web through a search and retrieval system and to preserve digital assets over the long term. Its key features are:
  • The online presentation of the content in an organized tree of Community and Collections is a main feature of DSpace.
  • Users can access pages for individual items, these are metadata descriptions together with files available for download.
  • Full-text search: DSpace can process uploaded text based contents for full-text searching. This means that not only the metadata you provide for a given file will be searchable, but all of its contents will be indexed as well. This allows users to search for specific keywords that only appear in the actual content and not in the provided description.
  • Navigation : DSpace allows users to find their way to relevant content in a number of ways, including:
  • Searching for one or more keywords in metadata or extracted full-text
  • Faceted browsing through any field provided in the item description. Search is an essential component of discovery in DSpace. Users' expectations from a search engine are quite high, so a goal for DSpace is to supply as many search features as possible.