TEAM HERALD
PANJIM: Goa’s first paperless Assembly session ended on Thursday with Speaker Rajendra Arlekar urging legislators to improve their behavior during the sessions, from the next Legislative Assembly sessions.
“We all are here to conduct the proceedings smoothly… half our term has come to an end… We need to improve our behaviour and style of asking questions from the next assembly session,” he said during his valedictory remark.
Arlekar applauded Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar and Leader of Opposition Pratapsing Rane for being ‘very helpful in making the session successful.’
“All the members gave good support to me…from September onwards the entire security system (in the Assembly complex) will be upgraded,” he added. “Our journey is two and half year…now we cannot look back…we all need to introspect on our functioning for the past two and half years.”
During the 21-day long assembly session, a total of 1989 starred questions and 2216 unstarred questions were asked by MLAs. Overall, 3305 questions were asked. While 1505 questions were sent online, seven starred and six unstarred questions have been postponed for the next assembly session.
“Online questions were invited with an aim to make Assembly paperless and this is a historical step. All the functioning of the Assembly was uploaded on the website,” he said, adding it is still not clear whether Goa is the first State in the country to go paperless, as according to some dailies, Himachal Pradesh Legislative Assembly was the first to do so.
