Maharashtra assembly to go paperless with hi-tech system, akin to new Parliament

The HMCS is an upgraded version of the one in the Parliament and is believed to be a major step towards digitisation of the two houses of the state legislature

The Maharashtra assembly is set to go paperless in line with speaker Rahul Narwekar’s recent announcement of plans to develop the state legislature on the lines of the Central Vista in Delhi.

For representational purposes only. (Brähler Image)

As per the plan, legislators in the Maharashtra assembly will soon get hybrid multimedia conference systems (HMCS) on their desktops, costing ₹10 lakh each.

The touchscreen display in it will give lawmakers, at their table, abstract audios and videos of their speeches, obtain references of old speeches by other legislators and the business proceedings of the House.

Narwekar said the secretariat will soon move a proposal to construct a new House on the lines of the Central Vista that houses the new Parliament. “After the delimitation of the assembly constituencies, the number of the MLAs is expected to go up and the present building will not have the seating capacity to accommodate all. Taking that need into account, we are moving the proposal to the state government for the new building. The space for the existing parking lot could be utilised for it,” he said.

The HMCS is an upgraded version of the one in the Parliament and is believed to be a major step towards digitisation of the two houses of the state legislature. The system will cost ₹28 crore and will replace the laptops on the benches.

“The system, developed by German firm Brähler, will have a touchscreen display with six screens. The screens will have order of the day, copy of questions and their reply, and other documents otherwise issued in paper format. The legislators will be able to browse legislature and other websites and access the library online. The screen will have the live telecast of the business with the facility of accessing previous business,” the official said.

“The touchscreens in the Parliament are 10 inch in size while here they are 15 inch. Our system has the facility of downloading and saving data. We are checking cyber security to give access of other websites to the members,” another official said.

The HMCS will be launched from the monsoon session which is set to begin from July 17. In the second phase, a similar system will be installed in the upper house too, officials added.