The north eastern state of Nagaland created history by becoming the first state legislature across the country to implement the National e-Vidhan Application (NEVA) program to go completely paperless. In the ongoing budget session of the state, the Nagaland Assembly Secretariat has attached a tablet or e-book on each table in the 60-member assembly.
Union Minister of Parliamentary Affairs pralhad joshi “Nagaland becomes the first Legislative Assembly in India to successfully implement the National e-Vidhan Project. Now members can use electronic devices to participate in the proceedings of the House. This initiative encourages paperless operations,” tweeted Nagaland And reflects the government’s commitment towards Ashta Lakshmi.”
What is Neva?
NeVA is a Unicode compliant software with a provision to easily access various documents like list of questions, list of business, reports etc. bilingually. English and any regional language. The application is pioneering the principle of ‘One Nation-One Application’, which aims at Cloud First and Mobile First to Serve Member First.
Under Neva, technical and financial provisions have been made to create a digital archive of the entire heritage data and make it available to the users including members and citizens in an easily searchable mode through mobile app and website.
A mission mode project for digital legislatures “National e-Vidhan Application (NEVA)” has been developed on the theme of ‘One Nation-One Application’ to make the functioning of all the Legislative Assemblies of the country paperless. Neva is replacing all the state legislatures in ‘Digital Houses’ to enable them to transact the entire government business on a digital platform including exchange of information in digital mode with the departments of the State Government. It is meant to bring far-reaching changes in governance across the country by making people well informed and enlightened. citizens and thus strengthening the roots of democracy in the country. NEVA is bringing more synergy, coordination, transparency and accountability not only between the legislature and the executive in a state but also across states. Keeping in view the latest technological developments, AI and IoT have been optimally utilized in the area of ICT to make Neva a robust IT product.
Since, the procedure for functioning of all Legislatures is the same except for a few minor changes, provisions have been incorporated in the Neva to enable the same to be incorporated by both the Houses of Parliament as well.
On Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with 18 States, viz., (1) Punjab, (2) Odisha, (3) Bihar {both houses}, (4) Meghalaya, (5) for adoption of National e-Vidhan Application (NEVA) have been signed. Mizoram, (6) Manipur, (7) Gujarat, (8) Arunachal Pradesh, (9) Nagaland, (10) Puducherry, (11) Tripura, (12) Himachal Pradesh, (13) Chhattisgarh, (14) Tamil Nadu, ( 15) Sikkim, (16) Haryana, (17) Uttar Pradesh (both houses) (18) Jharkhand.
Out of these 18, Detailed Project Reports have been submitted by 13 States i.e. (1) Punjab (2) Odisha, (3) Bihar {Both Houses}, (4) Nagaland, (5) Manipur, (6) Sikkim, ( 7) Tamil Nadu, (8) Meghalaya, (9) Haryana, (10) Tripura (11) Uttar Pradesh (both houses) (12) Mizoram, (13) Arunachal Pradesh for sanction of funds. All except the last one (Arunachal Pradesh) have been sanctioned necessary funds for the implementation of the project as per the requirement of the concerned Legislature. All these Assemblies have started procuring various equipments as per their requirement by following the respective procurement procedure and general financial rules/regulations/guidelines without the intervention of the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs.
As a special achievement, Bihar Vidhan Parishad became the first House in the country to go completely on Neva platform on November 25, 2021 and held the Winter Session, 2021 in paperless mode on Neva platform. He will also organize the upcoming budget session, 2022 on NeVAplatform. Odisha Assembly also presented its Budget 2021 in paperless mode using Neva. Other Houses are also following the same path and with the completion of procurement of IT equipment and setting up of necessary infrastructure in and around the Houses, the functioning of all State Legislatures will see a marked change during the next few months.
Keeping in view the federal structure and autonomy of State/UT Legislatures, all are being encouraged to adopt Neva.
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