Why in news? Karnataka state government is implementing the National e-Vidhan application in the state legislature.

Highlights:

• National e-Vidhan Application (NeVA) is one of the Mission Mode Projects (MMPs).
• Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs (MPA) is the “Nodal Ministry‟ for its implementation.

About e-Vidhan?

• “National eVidhan Application (NeVA)”, a Mission Mode Project for Digital Legislatures to make the functioning of all Legislative Houses in the country paperless . it has been developed on the theme of ‘One Nation – One Application’.
• 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
• e-Vidhan/e-Sansad have been re-designated as National e-Vidhan Application (NeVA) in all the 37 State/UT Legislatures and the 2 Houses of Parliament viz. Lok Sabha & Rajya Sabha supported by National Informatics Centre (NIC).
• It is a important step towards reduction of carbon footprints and moving a step forward in the achievement of the United Nation Development Programme’s Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) -15 “Life on Earth‟
• Himachal Pradesh Assembly was the first one to go paperless after the execution of the pilot project with central assistance
• NeVA is a generic digital application hosted on National Cloud -Meghraj with maintenance, security and disaster recovery for all legislatures.

What is the role of e-NeVA in State/UT Legislatures?

• NeVA is a Unicode compliant software having provision for easy access to various documents like List of Questions, List of Business, Reports etc. bilingually viz. English and any regional language.
• This application is spearheading the principle of ‘One Nation- One Application’ with the objective of Cloud First and Mobile First to serve Members’ FIRST.

What are the advantages in its adoption ?

• NeVA is transforming all State Legislatures into ‘DIGITAL HOUSES’ so as to enable them to transact entire Government Business on digital platform including information exchange with the State Government Departments in digital mode.
• It stands for bringing far reaching transformation in the governance across the country by making the people well informed & enlighten citizens and thereby strengthening the roots of the democracy in the country.
• NeVA is not only bringing greater synergy, coordination, transparency and accountability between the Legislature and the executive, but also across the States.
• Keeping in view the latest technological development in the field of ICT, maximum use of AI& IOT has been made to make NeVA a robust IT product.

NeVA in States

• Odisha– 1st state to use NeVA presenting paperless budget.
• Bihar Legislative Council- 1st digital house using NeVA platform.
• Nagaland is the first assembly to install necessary hardware for digitalization through NeVA.
• The Uttar Pradesh Legislative has installed the necessary hardware for the digitalization of the house. The Budget Session -2022 of UP assembly has been conducted through the NeVA platform.