e-VIDHAN APPLICATION
1. Context
A delegation of MLAs from Gujarat visited the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly, to learn about the novel e-Vidhan system for paperless proceedings that has been recently adopted by the UP state assembly
2. e-Vidhan Application (NeVA)
- The National e-Vidhan Application (NeVA) is a system for digitising the legislative bodies of all Indian states and the Parliament through a single platform on which house proceedings, starred/unstarred questions and answers, committee reports etc. will be available
- Nagaland became the first state to implement NeVA, in March 2023.
- The NeVA system has been developed to make all the work and data related to legislative bodies available online for the use of both citizens and the members of Assemblies. It includes a website and a mobile app
3. Necessity of NeVA
- This has been done for streamlining information related to various state assemblies, and to eliminate the use of paper in day-to-day functioning.
- Its website states: “Several thousand tons of papers would be saved, which in turn would help in saving lakhs of trees annually”.
- Himachal Pradesh’s Legislative Assembly implemented the pilot project of NeVA in 2014, where touch-screen devices replaced paper at the tables of the MLAs
- The then Chief Minister, the Congress party’s Virbhadra Singh, had inaugurated the e-Vidhan system. Though reluctant to learn the new system at the age of 80 years, he later appreciated the technology becoming “more useful for the MLAs”.
- According to the state government’s website, by adopting the digitised system, the state has annually saved 6,000 trees, and around Rs 15 crore in expenditure
4. Challenges
The International Parliamentary Union, an organisation of more than 170 parliaments including India, in a 2018 report outlined some challenges in this regard
Access, particularly for legislators representing rural constituencies, to devices and reliable internet and electricity was an issue.
In its 2020 report, it said lack of training and heightened concerns over security are some more recent issues in the road to digitisation.
Source: indianexpress
