eVidhan Project Launched by Honourable Chief Minister, Himachal Pradesh
The eVidhan project was formally inaugurated by the Honourable Chief Minister of Himachal Pradesh, Sh. Virbhadra Singh on 4th August 2014. A number of Ministers and Members of the Assembly including, Sh. Kaul Singh Thakur, Minister for Revenue, Health & Family Welfare, Sh. Mukesh Agnihotri, Minister for Industries, Sh. Sudhir Sharma, Minister for Housing & Urban Development, Sh. D.R. Shandil, Minister for Welfare were present during the launch ceremony. The current Monsoon Assembly session is being implemented through eVidhan.
In his inaugural address, the Chief Minister expressed hope that the eVidhan system would be adopted by all members of the Assembly and result in huge savings to the Government besides bringing efficiency and transparency in the system.
Sh. Brij Bihari Lal Butail, Honourable Speaker of HP Assembly has been the driving force behind the eVidhan initiative and got the necessary funding through Department of Electronics & IT, MCIT, GoI. He himself read the speech from a laptop during the occasion. He assured that although it is a new system and members may take some time to get used to this system, necessary technical support will be provided under the eVidhan project.
With this the Himachal Pradesh Assembly has become the first ever high-tech Legislative Assembly of India where touch-screen based laptops have been installed on the seats of the all honourable members of the house for viewing replies to questions, bills and other papers, including e-voting through the new system.
The eVidhan solution includes digital recording of proceeding of the house, time management, hand-written notes through tablets, video conferencing with Governor house, questions processing, proceedings, RFID based entry passes, constituency management, legislative committees, library MIS etc.
The technical support and coordination for eVidhan has been provided by NIC Himachal Pradesh and NICSI is the implementing agency.