Even though Jharkhand Assembly is fully prepared to implement online ‘Question Management System’ (QMS) from the upcoming Monsoon Session beginning on August 1, administrative lethargy seems to have put off the implementation of the system by a few more sessions. According to the Assembly Secretariat, most of the departments have not even appointed Nodal Officers for the purpose, neither have they sent their staff for training to handle online QMS.
Moreover, the Assembly is yet to receive replies to the questions asked by the legislators during the last session, supposed to be answered within 15 days after it concluded.
“We are fully prepared, but the departments seem to take more time as they are yet to appoint nodal officers for the purpose and train their men thorough IT or NIC to handle the QMS,” said Assembly Secretary Sunil Kumar Singh. The situation will be put before the Assembly Speaker tomorrow during the meeting and he will take final decision on it, he added.
According to the Singh, the QMS was supposed to be put on-line completely during this Monsoon Session to be starting from August 1 but it is likely to take some more time to get started. “We had sent the questions asked by the members of the house to the respective departments to in order to get their replies online but we are yet to receive answers from them,” he said.
In order to press the system in practice, Assembly will send the questions to the departments on line seeking answers from online, besides sending them manually.
“To promote online queries with the departments, we will send online questions to them, besides sending them manually, but to avoid any confusion, only manual answers will be taken as authentic ones and kept in records,” said an official in the Assembly requesting anonymity. As all departments adopt it and gets accustomed to the system, we will switch over to the online QMS.
Referring to the deadline given by the Assembly Speaker to the departments to provide answers within 15 days of last session, the official said that barring few, most of the departments are yet to provide answers to them.
Speaker Shashank Shekher Bhokta has called a meeting to discuss the proceedings during the Monsoon Session to be attended by all the top officials of the state government including Chief Secretary Sajal Chakraverty and Home Secretary NN Pandey.