State assembly, parliamentary operations to be fully digitised

India is one of the fastest-growing digital markets in the world with over half a billion internet subscribers.

According to a McKinsey Global Institute study titled "Digital India: Technology to transform a connected nation", digital technologies are rapidly spreading and could have a significant impact on the Indian economy by 2025 if the government and private sector work together to create digital ecosystems.

With this in mind, the Indian government has been scaling up the digitisation process on various fronts.

It started with the issue of Aadhaar in 2010. Citizens were encouraged to link their Aadhaar cards with their bank accounts for quick payments, and it led to the rise of UPI transactions in the country.

Today, more than 130 crore citizens use Aadhaar as a form of identity and it has made the dream of “one nation, one card” a reality. The Supreme Court approved the validity of the Aaadhaar card and since 2019, citizens can link all their government documents to the Aadhaar to keep them in the same place. 

The Centre has once again set out to make digital progress with the introduction of the e-vidhan system. A new “one nation, one application” dream has been dreamt and the NeVA (National eVidhan Application) launched.

NeVA makes legislative proceedings, starred and unstarred questions and answers, committee reports, etc, available on one platform for all Indian states and Parliament.

According to a report by the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs, the idea behind NeVA is two-fold. “First is to ensure ease of transaction of business of houses by turning the legislatures paperless.” This will translate into a large amount of resources saved—in terms of carbon footprint as well as man-hours. “Secondly and equally importantly, NeVA wants to bring all the legislatures of this country at one platform. All the data related to the functioning of the legislature from questions asked, to the list of business, the documents laid will be available at one place. This data will be available to one and all at one click,” the report states. 

NeVA is an estimated Rs. 673.94-crore project for bringing legislatures on digital platforms. The Himachal Pradesh assembly became the first House in India to implement an eVidhan system in 2014 after a pilot project was launched in the hill state with central assistance of Rs.8.12 crores. The project saved about Rs 5.08 crores annually on paper, printing, manpower, and conservation of forests and trees.

After the launch of the pilot project, further developments were delayed and or or went largely unreported. However, in November 2021, during the 82nd All India Presiding Officers Conference’ in Himachal, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said, “A real-time detail of the working of all the Houses should be available to the common citizen and also to all the Houses of the country. For this, a modern digital platform has been developed in the form of National e-Vidhan Application”.

There are eight steps in the process for NeVA to be put into practice.

Image Credits: NeVA 2022 brochure

In 2022, multiple training sessions have been held in various states to familiarise members of the legislative councils, assemblies and Parliament with the system. 

Memorandums of Understanding have been signed with 18 states and union territories (UTs), adding up to 20 Houses. These are Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Odisha, Bihar (legislative assembly and legislative council), Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh (both Houses), Nagaland, Mizoram, Meghalaya, Sikkim, Tripura, Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh, Puducherry, & Tamil Nadu. Out of these, 13 have constituted their State Project Management Units (SPMUs) and submitted detailed projects reports. 

After evaluation and approval of the reports, 10 states have been issued the first instalment of funds. These states are Punjab, Haryana, Odisha, Bihar (both houses), Nagaland, Manipur, Sikkim, Meghalaya, Tripura, and Tamil Nadu. 

In March 2022, Nagaland became the first state to go live with the NeVA application. Meghalaya and others followed suit. Several other states are in the process of setting up the system.

Addressing a press conference after the conclusion of the Budget session, Lok Sabha speaker Om Birla said, “We are working on bringing proceedings of all state legislatures on one platform. I think we will be able to do it by 2023.”

The Inter-Parliamentary Union, an international organisation consisting of 178 member parliaments, and 14 associate members, released a report on e-parliaments in 2020. The report outlined the importance of virtual systems that democracies can leverage, especially in the wake of Covid-19.

In 2020, due to the coronavirus pandemic and a dynamic shift in working patterns, 65 percent of the parliaments surveyed had held virtual or hybrid meetings. 

In a similar report in 2018, it stated that the challenge for MPs included “a lack of sufficient training and skills, and, for nearly a third, concerns over security and trust”,

These challenges still stand true, especially for a developing economy such as India. NeVA, if implemented successfully, should help address some of those at least.