The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh / Hyderabad News : State Assembly debates digitised

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Saturday, Jul 22, 2006

Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh - Hyderabad

State Assembly debates digitised

Ravi Reddy

GOING HI-TECH: Speaker K. R. Suresh Reddy with Raj Reddy (to the Speaker's right) at a meeting in the Assembly on Friday.

HYDERABAD: The State Assembly has achieved a unique distinction of digitising a whopping 3-lakh pages of debates in the House ever since the historic first session in 1952 in Hyderabad.

The achievement coincides with the ongoing golden jubilee fete of the Assembly and forms part of the ambitious digitisation programme. So far, debates from the first to the eleventh Assembly have been digitised, including those in the Hyderabad Assembly (March 21, 1952) and the Andhra Assembly (November 23, 1953).

All this was possible by participating in the "Universal Digital Library Project" organised by Dr. Raj Reddy Foundation, USA.

Speaker K. R. Suresh Reddy had a meeting on Friday with Dr. Raj Reddy, Professor of Computer Science and Robotics, Carnegie Mellon University, USA, who promised full support for the digitisation programme.

Speaking to The Hindu later, the Speaker said the digitised information would be made available to all members online. "We are also in the process of making it available to all Legislature Party offices on the Assembly premises very soon," Mr. Reddy added.

The Assembly library has a total collection of 37,000 accessioned books, besides thousands of reports and hundreds of volumes of debates of the Legislature as well as Parliament. The Speaker said the Andhra Pradesh Assembly Library Committee headed by Tenali MLA Nadendla Manohar was coordinating with the Director, Public Libraries, and Dr. Raj Reddy Foundation to complete the digitisation work.

Video conferencing on anvil

Plans were also afoot to provide video conferencing facilities to all legislators. "This will be possible as soon as the Andhra Pradesh Broadband project takes off. The idea is to equip every MLA with a laptop computer and allow them to remain in contact with their constituents."

Mr. Reddy said the official website of the Assembly would be re-launched shortly to provide e-petition facility to the people.

"All the 294 MLAs will get personal email IDs to enable them to access the mails," he said.

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