Goa Assembly to turn paperless from next week's session

Goa Legislative Assembly's upcoming Session starting on July 22, will mostly be a paperless affair with over 95 per cent of the business going online.
Speaker of Legislative Assembly Rajendra Arlekar told reporters today that the e-assembly and paperless assembly concepts, conceived long back, will be a reality during the coming session.
"A team of the Directorate of Information Technology and Legislature wing has worked for more than one-and half-years now to get this concept executed," he said.
The business of the House, including the questions and answers, would be uploaded on the website, which would be accessible for the general public once the Question Hour gets over.

Members of the Legislative Assembly have been given special logins and passwords so that they can access the material online during the Session, the Speaker said.
Arlekar said the MLAs would be allowed to use laptops or tablets which will be connected through wi-fi, so that they can access the matter online.

"Almost 95 per cent of the usage of paper has been done away. In the due course of time we will have the entire Assembly session go paperless. Wherever required we will be giving compact disks," he added.
For the first time, the legislators were allowed to submit their questions online, Arlekar said.

"Out of the 2,511 questions, 1,118 were received online. This spared the legislators from travelling to Assembly complex to submit the questions in writing," Arlekar stated.
Former Goa Chief Minister Digambar Kamat is the only legislator to submit all his questions online, while other MLAs, including Aleixo Reginaldo Lourenco (Congress), Ganesh Gaonkar (BJP), Naresh Sawal (Independent) have filed their maximum questions online, he added.