85th All India Presiding Officers Conference Concludes in Patna

The 85th All India Presiding Officers Conference concluded in Patna, Bihar on 21 January 2025. The two-day 85th All India Presiding Officers Conference was held at the Bihar Legislature premises in Patna on 20 & 21 January 2025.

The 61st Conference of Secretaries of Legislative Bodies in India was also held on 19th January 2025  in Patna just before the commencement of the 85th All India Presiding Officers Conference.

The first All India Presiding Officer Conference was held in 1921 in Shimla. The 82nd All India Presiding Officer Conference which marked the 100th year of the first Conference was also held in Shimla in November 2021.

The 84th All India Presiding Officer Conference was held at the Maharashtra Legislature premises in Mumbai on the 27th and 28th of January 2024.

Participant of the All India Presiding Officers Conference

The All India Presiding Officers Conference is an annual event in which the Presiding Officers of the Union/State and Union Territories having legislature, attend.

Parliament is the Union legislature in India which has two houses- Rajya Sabha and the Lok Sabha. The Presiding officer of Lok Sabha is the Speaker while the Vice President of India is the ex-officio Chairman of the Rajya Sabha. However, in the All India Presiding Officers Conference the Deputy Chairman normally represents the Rajya Sabha. In  Patna, Rajya Sabha was represented by Deputy Chairman Harivansh.

In India, 28 States have their legislature. The state legislature can be unicameral (Legislative Assembly ) or bi-cameral(Legislative Assembly and Legislative Council).

At present three Union Territories of Delhi, Puducherry, and Jammu and Kashmir have Legislative Assembly.

The Presiding officers of the State/Union Territories Legislative Assembly are called Speakers while the Presiding officers of the Legislative Council are called Chairman.

Currently, six states -Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Telangana, and Karnataka have a Legislative Council.

Bihar hosted the All India Presiding Officers Conference for the third time

This was the third time that Bihar hosted the All India Presiding Officers Conference.

Bihar hosted the All India Presiding Officers Conference for the first time on the 6th and 7th January 1964 when Lakshmi Narayan Sudhanshu was the Assembly Speaker.

The second time Bihar hosted was in 1982 when Radhanandan Jha was the Speaker of the Bihar Legislative Assembly.

At present the Speaker of the Bihar Legislative is Nand Kishore Yadav.

Who Inaugurated the  85th All India Presiding Officers Conference?

• The  85th All India Presiding Officers Conference was inaugurated by Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla on 20 January 2025.
• The Valedictory session was addressed by Om Birla and Bihar Governor Arif Muhammad Khan on 21 January 2025.

Theme of the  85th All India Presiding Officers Conference

The theme of the 85th All India Presiding Officers Conference was “75th Anniversary of Constitution: Contribution of Parliament and State legislative bodies in strengthening constitutional values”.

Om Birla inaugurated NeVA Seva Kendra

During the Conference, Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla inaugurated the NeVA Seva Kendra in the Bihar Legislature premises. 

The National e-Vidhan Application (NeVA) project aims to create paperless and digital legislative processes in state legislatures.

It will help the Bihar Legislative Assembly project to go paperless like many states in India.

Nagaland was the first state in India to implement NeVA in 2022 and the proceedings of the state Legislative Assembly became paperless. The members participated in the house proceedings through electronic devices.

Parliament Papers and Processing to be available in 22 Indian Languages

Speaking on the occasion, the Lok Sabha Speaker said that soon with the help of artificial intelligence, all the Parliamentary papers and proceedings of both the houses of Parliament will be made available in the 22 Indian languages mentioned in the eight schedules of the constitutions.

At present, the preceding papers of the parliament are available in English and Hindi only.

The 22 languages mentioned in the 8th schedule are: Assamese, Bengali, Bodo, Dogri, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada,  Kashmiri, Konkani, Malayalam, Manipuri, Marathi, Maithili, Nepali, Oriya, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Santhali, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu.

 61st Conference of Secretaries of Legislative Bodies

• The 61st Conference of Secretaries of Legislative Bodies was held on 19th January in Patna just before the 85th All India Presiding Officers Conference.
• The 61st Conference of Secretaries of Legislative Bodies was inaugurated by the Secretary General of the Lok Sabha, Utpal Kumar Singh.
• The theme of the Conference was-Adoption of modern technologies in our legislative bodies for greater efficiency, effectiveness, and productivity.