Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla inaugurated NeVA Seva Kendra in the Bihar Legislature premises on Tuesday, the concluding day of the 85th All India Presiding Officers’ Conference (AIPOC) held here.

It was a significant initiative as the Bihar Legislative Assembly is gearing up to go paperless with the beginning of the budget session. The National e-Vidhan Application (NeVA) is a transformative project aiming to create paperless and digital legislative processes in state legislatures.

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Earlier, the Speaker urged the Presiding officers attending the conference to use new technology to bring more efficiency in the programmes of the legislative institutions, to make public participation, and to increase the productivity of legislative institutions.

He said that the Parliament is moving ahead at a fast pace to make available the Parliament papers, rules and all the proceedings of the House in all the 22 languages that are recognised in the Parliament.

“The Parliament has also compiled all the debates of the Parliament from 1947 till now in Hindi and English using Artificial Intelligence and in the coming time, it will be translated in 22 languages,” he said.

“In this Patna session, we have resolved to bring on one platform whatever debates have taken place in the state assemblies till now, after translating them into Hindi and English,” he added.

Speaking at the plenary session, Rajya Sabha Deputy Chairman ,Harivansh, underlined the need for effective scrutiny of budgets in legislatures and said that there needs to be a political consensus among parties at the state level to commit to economic growth. He added that financial security of the country must receive the same priority as any other national security issues.

“India’s ambition of becoming a developed nation by 2047 will be possible only when all states collectively focus on economic growth. Hence legislatures must examine whether the budget in their respective states is being allocated efficiently and not increasing debt burden. If we want to be an economic power there needs to be a renewed political consensus to stay away from irrational expenditure,” he said.

He also touched upon the need for legislators to introspect on their conduct in the House.

“In older times there used to be governments with massive majority, yet those selected members in the Opposition were able to present their views effectively and present their dissent in a dignified way. The nature of disruption today shows that we have forgotten how to disagree respectfully,” he said.