The Uttarakhand Assembly’s move to go digital has apparently not gone down well with the legislators as they are unable to leaf through their tablet beyond logging in. Assembly speakers had to organise special training sessions for them to operate tablets set up on their chairs.
Uttarakhand legislature for the first time took to digital business e-Vidhan Sabha under the National e-Vidhan Application (e-NeVA) beginning with its budget session 2025 on February 18.
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However the e-Vidhan Sabha has emerged as a big challenge for the MLAs. Tablets mounted on their seats in the house have become too difficult a puzzle to be used by them.
More than 50 MLAs of the 70-member state assembly could not even leaf through these gazettes beyond logging in. On day one MLAs did not even find it convenient to see governor’s address online in their tablets but preferred to leaf through the booklet provided to them.
It’s significant that the MLAs attempted once or twice to open the tablets and watch the governor’s address online but found it too difficult to get success in tracing the speech digitally. As a result they gave up their efforts and took to the governor’s speech through hard copy kept on their seats.
Seeing the susceptibility of the state legislators to explore digital services through e-Vidhan Sabha speaker Ritu Khanduri had intervened to make them learn. Khandur asked the assembly authorities to depute two Information Technology Development Agency (ITDA) officials to assist and teach MLAs how to operate the tablets and use e-Vidhan Sabha Portal smoothly.
Later Ritu Khanduri said “e-Vidhan Sabha in Uttarakhand assembly has just begun. It’s not possible to make the session paperless completely. A one hour training program has been arranged every morning to impart lessons as e-Vidhan application for the MLAs at the assembly campus.” Speaker added “Presently only the day’s business agenda and questions to be taken up in the house are being made available on their tablets. The digital process will bring transparency along with improvement in parliamentary functioning.”
