In news– Recently, 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.
About National 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.
- It is a Mission Mode Project under the Digital India Programme for Digital Legislatures.
- NeVA is a Unicode compliant software having provision for easy access to various documents like List of Questions, List of Business, Reports etc. bilingually viz. English and any regional language.
- Technical & financial provisions have been made under NeVA for creating digital archives of entire legacy data and making it available to users including Members and citizens in easy to search mode through mobile App and website as well.
- The Aims and Objectives of e-Vidhan MMP are electronic flow of information, laying of documents on the Table of the House and Electronic information exchange among all the stakeholders, thus to create paperless Legislatures in the country.
- This will also provide Data analytics, Information processing and analysis of the data of all the State Legislatures.
- It has been developed on the theme of ‘One Nation – One Application’ with the objective of Cloud First and Mobile First to serve Members’ FIRST.
- The Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs, Government of India is the Nodal Department for e-Vidhan MMP.
- It envisages leveraging and utilizing the e-infrastructure namely National Cloud (Meghraj), Statewide Area Network (SWAN) / National Knowledge Network (NKN), Integrated Network Operation Centre (INOC) infrastructure for Network/Wifi management etc.
- To adopt NeVA, Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) have been signed with 18 States.
- 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.
- As a special achievement, Bihar Legislative Council became the first House in the country to transit to NeVA platform completely on 25th November 2021 and conducted Winter Session, 2021 on the NeVA platform in paperless mode.
- Odisha Assembly also presented their budget 2021 in paperless mode using NeVA.
Note- In December 2021, the Government of Dubai became the world’s first government to go 100 percent paperless. The US government announced in 2019 that by the end of 2022, all government agencies would stop dealing with paper.
Source: PIB
