DNA Explainer: What is the digital Vidhan Sabha system and how it will function?

Recently, the largest state of India, Uttar Pradesh state assembly adopted the novel e-Vidhan system for paperless proceedings. It was the first time that UP state assembly proceedings, that took place last month, was completely digitised. Prior to that, a training programme was organised to familiarise the representatives with the digital Vidhan Sabha technology.

Last year, Bihar became the country's first state to have digitally equipped the state legislative council with e-Vidhan. The Bihar Legislative Council members were able to answer to their questions from the concerned departments of the state government on their digital tabs, which are installed in the seat of every member of the council.

Read | App to soon make all legislatures paperless

Besides, the e-Vidhan system has already been implemented in Kerala and Himachal Pradesh too. This year, Nagaland became the first state to implement NeVA, in March, 2022. This was possible through the 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 among others will be available. 

What is the National e-Vidhan Application (NeVA) system?

NeVA or National e-Vidhan Application is a Unicode compliant software 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. NeVA includes a website and a mobile app.

Through this software there is a providion for easy access to various documents like List of Questions, List of Business, Reports among others. This lives to the idea of 'One Nation, One Application' with the objective of Cloud First and Mobile First to serve Members' FIRST. 

Prime Minister Narendra Modi mentioned the idea of 'One Nation One Legislative Platform' in November 2021. Narendra Modi has been promoting the idea of digital India since he took over as the Prime Minister of the country.

Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla has already reiterated this year that the proceedings of all legislatures, both Houses of Parliament and state Assemblies and Legislative Councils  will be available on one platform by 2023. Technical and financial provisions have been made under NeVA for creating digital archives of entire legacy data.

This will then be made available to users including Members and common citizens in easy to search mode through mobile App and website as well.

Why is NeVA being introduced?

NeVA is transforming all state legislatures into digital Vidhan Sabha system so as to enable them to transact entire Government Business on digital platform. This will also include information exchange with the State Government Departments in digital mode.

The digital Vidhan Sabha system will help in streamlining information related to various state assemblies and eliminate the use of paper in day-to-day functioning. By doing so, several thousand tons of papers would be saved, which in turn would help in saving lakhs of trees annually.

Through NeVA, the idea is to bring far reaching transformation in the governance across the country by making the people well informed and enlighten citizens and thereby strengthening the roots of the democracy in the country.

NeVA will bring greater synergy, coordination, transparency and accountability between the legislature and the executive in a state and also across all the states in the country. 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.

Maximum use of Artificial intelligence (AI) and internet of things (IoT) infrastructure has been used to make National e-Vidhan Application (NeVA) a robust IT product.

Key features

1. Paperless Assembly or e-Assembly is a concept involving electronic means to facilitate the work of Assembly.

2. It enables automation of entire law making process, tracking of decisions and documents, sharing of information.

3. Through the cloud technology (Meghraj), data deployed can be accessed anywhere at any time.

4. The State Government will appoint a Secretary level officer to be designated as the nodal officer/representative for e-Vidhan implementation in the State Legislature(s).

What are the 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, the Indian Express wrote.

In its 2020 report, it said lack of training and heightened concerns over security are some more recent issues in the road to digitisation.