Chandigarh, Feb 26 (PTI) Punjab Chief Secretary Vini Mahajan on Friday held a review meeting with the Secretary of the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs at the Centre to make proceedings of the state Assembly paperless under the 'Digital India' initiative.

According to the Secretary of the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs, Punjab is likely to be among the first states to rollout the National e-Vidhan application that involves computerization of the Assembly to ensure electronic delivery of information or data to the MLAs and to interact with the state departments, as per a state government statement here.

Under this project, each member would have a multipurpose touch screen panel in the House that shall provide them access to all information regarding the Assembly, including questions, answers, budget, speeches, etc. and enable him to participate in an e-voting process, it further said.

The project would also create a facility for video-conferencing and enable information dissemination for the common citizens through the public portals.

This shall lead to e-interaction and efficient communication between the citizen and their public representative for their grievance redressal, it said.

Mahajan said the state government has decided to conduct the proceedings of the monsoon session digitally and the entire proceedings of the House session will be digitized.

“The whole process will require 122 touch screen tablets, 40 computers and other equipments,” she said.

Further, she added that concurrently the capacity building work of existing staff is being carried out as some approvals are being obtained, and the requisite professional staff is being deployed.

Under the Neva project (National e-Vidhan Application), the Assemblies of all states and Union territories of the country are being digitized and made paperless.

The Neva app and website will also be launched as funds worth Rs 739 crore has been earmarked for this purpose, it stated.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)