Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs and Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation, Shri Arjun Ram Meghwal, while giving a written reply to a question in Lok Sabha today, gave details on the status of implementation of National e-Vidhan Application (NeVA) Project. Paperless Assembly or e-Assembly is a concept involving of electronic means to facilitate the work of Assembly. It enables automation of entire law making process, tracking of decisions and documents, sharing of information. NeVA aims to bring all the legislatures of the country together, in one platform thereby creating a massive data depository without having the complexity of multiple applications, the Minister said.

Shri Meghwal stated that NeVA is a device neutral and member centric application created to equip them to handle diverse House Business smartly by putting entire information regarding member contact details, rules of procedure, list of business, notices, bulletins, bills, starred/unstarred questions and answers, papers laid, committee reports etc. in their hand held devices/ tablets and equip all Legislatures/ Departments to handle it efficiently. Citizens would also gain access to this information at their fingertips.

NeVA will completely eliminate the process of sending out a notice/request for collection of data. Through the cloud technology (Meghraj), data deployed can be accessed anywhere at any time. Further, live webcasting of Lok Sabha TV and Rajya Sabha TVs is also available on this application. Doordarshan has already been enabled with provision to incorporate similar facility in respect of State Legislatures.

Shri Meghwal said that e-Vidhan is a Mission Mode Project (MMP) included in Digital India Programme and Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs (MoPA) is the ‘Nodal Ministry’ for its implementation in all the 31 States/ UTs with Legislatures. The total project cost of the project is over 738 crores and funding of NeVA is on the pattern of Central Sponsored Scheme i.e. 60:40; and 90:10 for North East & hilly States and 100% for UTs. The funding for e-Vidhan is provided by the MoPA and technical support by Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY). In order to promote the rolling out NeVA, the MoPA has consulted all State Governments.

The Minister said that the success of the implementation of NeVA lies with the States/UTs, the key stakeholders of the project. MoPA organized a two-day workshop on 24th and 25th September, 2018 at New Delhi, to familiarize officers from State Legislatures/Councils with the features and functionalities of NeVA. MoPA is providing regular training through Video Conferencing to all Legislatures. So far, such successful trainings have taken place at 10 such States viz. Punjab, Telangana, Karnataka, Sikkim, Bihar, Manipur, Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh, Gujarat, Kolkata. In order to provide assistance to the Members, a NeVA Kendra (e-Facilitation Center) will be setup at each location under a Nodal Officer. Himachal Pradesh is already the first Digital Legislature of the country. Other states like Punjab, Madhya Pradesh & Sikkim are also in various stages of transformation and their initiatives are highly commendable.

For implementation of e-Vidhan MMP for achieving paperless state legislature and electronic information services delivery to legislators and other stakeholders, tripartite memorandum of understanding will be signed among MoPA, Government of India, Government of State and State Legislatures, the Minister said.

Shri Meghwal stated that the Central Project Monitoring Unit (CPMU) under MoPA will be responsible for reviewing the financial and technical progress of the project. The State will prepare detailed project report (DPR) and gap analysis report. State level project monitoring committee will carry out the technical scrutiny and financial scrutiny of the DPR and after final approval of the same will be send to the MoPA for approval. After the technical and financial scrutiny, funds will be released for project implementation.

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). State Government will bear the funds required for running of e-Vidhan MMP after 3 years. The State Government will ensure capacity building for the effective implementation of e-Vidhan MMP module. State Government/Legislature will undertake maintenance and replacement of ICT equipment after 3 years. Release of next instalment would not be made in case the utilization certificate and confirmation of release of funds by the state government of their share is not received by the CPMU.

Further details are available on NeVA website. http://neva.gov.in/

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