The office of Delhi Lieutenant Governor on Thursday accused the Arvind Kejriwal-led AAP government of not implementing the digitalisation process of the Legislative Assembly.
It said that the Delhi Legislative Assembly remains the only House in the country that has not initiated the digitisation process so far.
“Even eight years after the rollout of the ambitious National E-Vidhan Application (NeVA) in 2015, which aims at digitising Legislative Assemblies across the country and making them paperless, the Delhi Legislative Assembly remains the only House that has not initiated the digitisation process so far,” the L-G office said.
It further stated that despite the Central government providing 100 per cent funding for the project, the AAP government in Delhi, in 2019, refused to accept the Centre’s financial and technical assistance for the project and instead chose to develop the application on its own, at an estimated cost of Rs 20 crore.
But the project is yet to see the light of day, despite a lapse of more than four-and-a-half years, it said.
The Secretary of the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs has written to the L-G Secretariat, urging intervention into the matter and ensuring the implementation of the project using the funds already available under the NeVA project.
“The L-G Secretariat has forwarded the request to the Principal Secretary (Law, Justice & Legislative Affairs), GNCTD, for appropriate action in the matter. It is noteworthy that all 37 Legislative Assemblies/Councils in the country, except Delhi, have already implemented or initiated the process of digitalisation of the House,” it said.
The Secretary of Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs had written to Delhi Chief Secretary in February this year, asking the government of Delhi to adopt Project NeVA.
“The Government of India is providing 100 per cent funding for the Union Territory of Delhi for the implementation of NeVA for the digitalisation of Vidhan Sabha, for maintenance, upgrading, customisation of the application, capacity building, Cloud deployment charges, and charges for a security audit for life.
“Since NeVA is a process-based application, the recurring cost of running the Assembly would be minimal, and the entire saving will accrue to the government of Delhi, for spending and for the convenience of the legislators and the general public,” read the letter written to the Chief Secretary.
According to the L-G office, in January 2019, the Delhi Assembly had decided to “opt-out” of Project NeVA, saying it would develop the eViddhan project from its own budget, which was estimated at Rs 20 crore.
“In his communication to Delhi Law Minister Kailash Gahlot in 2020, Assembly Speaker Ram Niwas Goel had acknowledged an ‘added urgent need to digitise and adopt electronic means of communication besides the various other advantages of a paperless legislature’; however, the Delhi Assembly and the Delhi government have kept sitting over the project since 2019,” the L-G office claimed.
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