Come April, people interested in accessing authentic information about Bihar districts can lay their hands on government books containing such details.

Termed District Gazetteer, these books would have information ranging from history to geography to local self-governments among other vital statistics related to the place concerned. Each district gazetteer would have 18 chapters dealing with different aspects of the place.

The revenue and land reforms department, which has taken the initiative, will bring out 1,000 copies of each gazetteer for 11 districts. Gazetteers, which were published in the past, became extinct owing to their non-publication in subsequent years.

"The bidding process for selecting a publisher would be completed by the end of January and copies of these gazetteers would be available by the end of this fiscal year," revenue and land reforms principal secretary Vivek Kumar Singh told The Telegraph on Monday.

The practice of publishing gazetteers dates back to the colonial era when imperial gazetteers were first published in the 1860s but these documents didn't contain much detail. The details were incorporated in district gazetteers published in the 20th century. In context of Bihar, this practice dates back to 1907 when LSS O'Malley, an ICS (Indian Civil Service) officer prepared the first such gazetteer for then Champaran district. Subsequently, officials of other districts brought out gazetteers. For example, ICS officer J. Byrne published the first district gazetteer for Bhagalpur in 1911.

When Bihar was carved out of Bengal in 1912, there were fewer districts in comparison to the present-day Bihar, which has 38. Several of these went to Jharkhand when it was carved out of Bihar in 2000. The present day Bihar districts for which gazetteers had been prepared at that time were Patna, Champaran, Saran, Bhagalpur, Munger, Purnea, Darbhanga, Gaya, Shahabad, Muzaffarpur and Saharsa.

In post-Independence era, these districts were further divided at different junctures, leading to the formation of 38 districts.

Efforts were made in the 1960s, when a Bihar government official the Late PC Roychaudhary was given the task of updating the district gazetteers. "Roychaudhary had done a wonderful job but the subsequent state governments didn't take interest in publishing the documents which have now become extinct," said sociologist Hetukar Jha.

Terming the present move as a good one, Jha said the department should ensure that the authenticity of the document is not tampered with in the name of providing updated information. "Due diligence is the key for publishing gazetteer and the colonial days officials were very particular about authenticity," Jha said and added that apart from referring to the pre-Independence gazetteers, officials should refer to the work of Roychaudhary who had worked very hard to prepare the gazetteers.

Revenue and land reforms department principal secretary Vivek Kumar Singh said the department had done the homework before embarking on the project. "We are using the past work and will incorporate the latest official figures to prepare the gazetteers," he said, adding: "Figures from the 2011 Census and various data generated by the planning department will be used while updating the latest editions of the district gazetteers."

He added that after completion of the publication of these documents, efforts will be made to sift the information according to the division of districts done in subsequent years so that separate gazetteers for all 38 districts could be in place in time to come.