Indian Parliament Is Not Comfortable With ICT Related Issues

Indian Parliament is not dealing with information and communication technology (ICT) related issues properly. This is more so regarding legal enablement of ICT systems in India. Since a dominant majority of members of Parliament are not aware of the technological aspects of laws, they never pay attention to crucial laws pertaining to cyber law, e-commerce, e-governance, e-health, etc.

Naturally, these technology driven laws are either not enacted at all or they are enacted without any deliberations or debates. For instance, the IT Amendment Bill, 2008 was passed by both Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha without even a discussion or debate. This shows both indifference towards and lack of knowledge about technology laws on the part of members of Parliament.

There is an emergent need to streamline Indian Parliament through use of ICT for all purposes, including law making. Parliament of India has to be more technology enabled and technology guided.

For instance live telecasting of the proceedings of Parliament, maintaining of websites by Parliament, etc are some of the examples where ICT has been used by Indian Parliament. However, Indian Parliament has to cover a long gap before it can be safely called fully ICT compliant.

Perry4Law has been managing the exclusive techno legal Indian centre for ICT in Parliament. The main purpose of this Centre is to ensure ICT enablement of Indian Parliament.

Further, Perry4Law Techno Legal Base (PTLB) and Perry4Law Techno Legal ICT Training Centre (PTLITC) have also started various techno legal e-learning courses, education, research and trainings for staff, employees, committees, committee members, members of Parliament, etc. This includes techno legal courses and trainings for legislative drafting, legislative research, legislative education, public legal awareness trainings, etc.

Recently, a motion for annulment of intermediary guidelines was moved in Rajya Sabha. This shows that the member of Rajya Sabha/Parliament have now started showing interest in technology related legal issues. It would be in the interest of Indian Parliament if it starts taking ICT related legal issues seriously as soon as possible.