National e-Vidhan Application: What is it and why is it significant?

The Parliamentary Affairs Ministry, on Wednesday, organised a workshop on the NeVA to encourage state legislatures to go paperless and bring transparency, accountability, and responsiveness in the conduct of House business through the use of technology.

The ministry said NeVA is one of the 44 mission mode projects under the Digital India Programme of the Union government seeking to make the functioning of all state legislatures paperless by transforming them into “Digital House”.

Till now, 21 state legislatures have signed agreements for the implementation of NeVA and the project has been sanctioned for 17 legislatures and funds have been released to them for its implementation, the ministry added.

Among them, nine legislatures have already become fully digital and are live on the NeVA platform, and are conducting all their business end-to-end in a digital and paperless manner, it said.

Whats is NeVA?

National e-Vidhan Application (NeVA) is a Unicode-compliant software developed to make all legislative body work and data available online for usage by both citizens and Assembly members. NeVA also includes a website and a mobile app.

This software allows for simple access to many documents such as the list of questions, list of businesses, and reports, among others. NeVA also embodies the concept of 'One Nation, One Application' with the objective of Cloud First and Mobile First to serve Members’ FIRST.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi proposed a 'One Nation, One Legislative Platform' in November 2021. 

Previously, Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla said that the proceedings of all legislatures, including both Houses of Parliament and state assemblies and legislative councils, will be available on a single platform by 2023. Technical and financial provisions have been made under NeVA for creating digital archives of entire legacy data.

This will subsequently be made available to users, including members and ordinary citizens, in an easy-to-search format via mobile apps and websites.

Why is NeVA being introduced?

NeVA is transforming all state legislatures into digital Vidhan Sabha systems, allowing them to conduct all government business on the digital platform. This will also include information exchange with the state government departments in digital mode.

The digital Vidhan Sabha system will serve to streamline information about numerous state assemblies and eliminate the need for paper in day-to-day operations. By doing so, several thousand tons of paper would be saved, which in turn would help in saving lakhs of trees annually.

The objective behind NeVA is to bring about far-reaching changes in government across the country by educating and informing citizens, so reinforcing the country's democratic roots.

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.

The 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, often known as e-Assembly, is a concept that uses electronic tools to facilitate Assembly work.

2. It allows for automation of the entire legislative process,  tracking of decisions and documents, and sharing of information.

3. Through 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).

(With inputs from agencies)