1. Purpose & Scope

The primary objective of the Content Archival Policy (CAP) is to outline a structured framework for managing the sunset lifecycle of data published on the official portal of the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA). As a regulatory body governing drug prices under the Drugs (Prices Control) Order (DPCO), the information displayed holds immense legal, judicial, and historical value. This policy ensures that obsolete or superseded content is removed from the active visual layer of the website while remaining seamlessly discoverable, audit-ready, and compliant with the Guidelines for Indian Government Websites (GIGW) and the Public Records Act.

2. Archival Trigger Mechanics

Content is automatically or manually queued for the archiving system based on three distinct operational triggers:

• Temporal Expiry: Content that reaches its pre-configured end-of-life timestamp as specified during the Content Contribution lifecycle.
• Regulatory Supersession: When a new ceiling price notification or amendment order is issued, the older baseline document is flagged for archival to avoid market confusion.
• Event-Driven Expiry: Specific notices, event circulars, and recruitment drives are queued for archiving immediately upon the conclusion of the event or cutoff date.

3. Retention & Archival Lifetimes

Different classes of regulatory documents obey varying retention dynamics to guarantee maximum legal coverage and site performance optimization:

4. Storage Architecture & Multi-Tier Classification

Archived content is partitioned into a multi-tier infrastructure to maximize server response efficiency while minimizing storage overhead costs:

• Tier-1: Active Archive (Near-line Storage): Documents that are older than their active threshold but still retain a high probability of judicial or public consultation. They remain indexing-accessible via a dedicated 'Archived Content' search interface on the front-facing website.
• Tier-2: Deep Archive (Offline Cold Storage): Critical statutory data that has passed its secondary online lifecycle. These assets are compiled into cryptographically signed, read-only ISO/compressed files and pushed to distinct offline storage blocks backed up across NIC data centers.

5. Governance, Access Control & Security Audit

To ensure data integrity, any file state shift from live production to the archival stack must satisfy stringent security and accessibility benchmarks:

5.1 GIGW Search Integrity & Metadata Retention

Archived assets must never become 'orphan links'. Every archived PDF or page component retains its comprehensive metadata package, including initial publishing date, author credentials, expiration trigger reason, and cross-referenced DPCO clause tags, keeping them fully indexable for internal administrative tooling.

5.2 Cryptographic Integrity & Chain of Custody

During execution of the archival batch script, the system automatically computes a SHA-256 cryptographic checksum for each document block. This hash value is permanently written into an immutable system audit log. Any administrative retrieval requires verification against this checksum to guarantee zero tamperation during the deep storage state.

5.3 De-archival and Emergency Restoration Protocol

In the event of active litigation, judicial reviews, or parliamentary questions requiring the immediate re-publishing of historic pricing models, a formal 'De-archival Request' must be submitted to the designated Web Information Manager (WIM). Upon electronic role-based approval, the system clears the asset out of Cold Storage and restores it to the active production layer with a temporary 90-day active clearance flag.