Fresh leaf turned on J&K’s e-vidhan project…!

Will govt take look on crores of rupees already spent in 2014 by IT deptt ?

Jammu: In series of progressive decisions taken for betterment of UT, the LG administration has turned a leaf afresh on getting J&K’s Legislature functioning paperless. A huge amount of over Rs 3 crore already stands ‘expended’ by IT department on the project which was to be implemented way back in 2013-14. Will LG take a look into reasons for ‘delay’ in the past and the money that has been shown as disbursed and used by NIC…?
After keeping the e-vidhan project in cold storage for years by the erstwhile elected governments, the decision of J&K’s Legislature “going green” or paperless appears making forward leap with first ‘introductory’ meeting held at the highest level of officers two days back.
Interestingly, the e-Assembly Project was in sanctioned in the year 2014 by the then government . Essentially, it aimed at making the working (procedural functioing) related to Assembly and Council sessions online, thereby reducing the dependence on paper besides speeding up the process.
Since the project involved more of technical aspects like software applications, setting up of Wi-Fi and many other digital components, the task was given to IT department working under the name of NIC. The work was initiated by the latter and the main software for the project was ‘imported’ from e -assembly of Rajasthan.
However, it stumbled a roadblock even as crores of rupees were earmarked and spent, sources said. It could not make any headway as no basic ground work was done by the concerned department nor things were implemented with proper planning, source further said. It wouldn’t be wrong to say that the said project remained confined to papers only- it began with paperwork and concluded with unexplained reasons on papers by the then government, he added. When the reasons for delay were sought to be explained in the House, the government could not do that only except admitting the delay on account of some technical problems and deficiencies faced by NIC in implementation. The government gave full details as to head-wise expenditure on various works of the project total cost of which was shown as Rs 3, 57, 17251.
With all technical explanations for delay and expenditure incurred, the plain fact remains that besides keeping it randomly spread, the money spent has gone down the drain and there is no one to seek answers where it has gone.

However, there seems to be a fresh beginning in this direction with holding of meeting at the highest level which this time looks meaningful effort. In the meeting it was conveyed by Secretary J&K Legislative Assembly Rajni Mahajan to concerned officers of other departments that LG Manoj Sinha and his administration have shown their keen interest in the new project and without any delay consent was given for MOU signed essentially by Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs which is the nodal ministry for providing funding. The project in UT is now part of NeVA-National e-vidhan model mission project already implemented in many other states.
Updated On 8/17/2022 10:39:17 AM