Paperwork will be a thing of the past at Madras University as the administration has decided to go completely paperless. It has been planned that all correspondence and official files relating to syndicate, academic council, Senate and communication to colleges will be done only through e-mail.

The decision was taken at a  meeting of the syndicate that was held on Thursday. The 160-year-old institution is perhaps the first in the country to go paperless.

Every year, two academic council meets, two Senate meetings and at least 12 syndicate meetings are conducted by the university. These meetings entail the use of large amounts of paper as agenda and minutes of the meeting that has to be printed and distributed to the members run into several hundreds of pages. Syndicate has 27 members, Senate 125 members and academic council more than 200 members.

Apart from this, the annual report and other reports run into more than 1000 pages. A sizable quantity of paper is also used up for examination as well as the board of studies related communication and documents.

It has been decided that instead of sending printed invitations, only e-invites will be sent for seminars, conferences and academic programmes.

Vice Chancellor P Duraisamy stated that the university can save at least 70 percent of its costs related to purchasing of papers, printer cartridges for office use and printing costs.