Rajya Sabha will soon bin paper for good and go digital.

While the House will have paper documentation for members who insist on the same, it will offering special incentives to members who go the paperless way.

Conceived by the Rajya Sabha Chairman Hamid Ansari, the move ahs been initiated with the setting up of a nine-member committee headed by RS secretary N C joshi. The committee will undertake a comprehensive and scientific study to eveolve a mechanism for minimising paper use and facilitating transition to the digital documentation mode. The committee is expected to submit its report before the start of Parliament's monsoon session in July.

Ansari is known to be a quiet crusader for effcient technology and conservation. The Cairman hopes that the Parliament will thus set an example for the nation in reducing the use of the limited available natural resources in whatever possible ways, more so when the modern technologies are accessible to all stakeholders in this digital era.

The committee constituted to reduce use of paper in the House consists of National Informatice Centre (NIC) technical director N S Arneja, Nirmal Kumar Azad, a director at the ministry of parliamentary affairs, Sanjeev Kumar, director in department of administrative reforms, Ghanshyam Goel, additional director general of Press Information Bureau (PIB) and four Rajya Sabha secretariat officials, namely P Gopalakrishnan, Vandana Garg,  D B Singh and Mukul Pande.

Its recommendations will be placed before the Committee on Providing Computer Equipment to members of the Rajya Sabha for approval and implementation.

TERMS OF REFERENCE: A 9-point charter given to the committee as its terms of reference include compilation of a list of printed documents supplied to MPs by the Rajya Sabha Secretariat and the Union Ministries and to identify the documents whose supply can be dispensed with by making them available digitally and their supply in the printed format to only those MPs making a specific request.

Other terms of reference are:

-- Supply of documents in CD/DVD format;

--  Feasibility of sending the list of business, Parliamentary bulletins and synopsis through e-mail to all Members as soon as they get uploaded on the websites;

-- Mechanism to cut down number of copies required from ministries for laying on the table of the House and for circulation to the MPs in printed, cyclostyled or photocopy format. The committee may inter alia recommend the minimum number of copies that will be required in paper format, and how and where the digital copy of these documents will be made available;

-- Reduction in the number of copies in paper form of both Starred and Unstarred questions for use in the Secretariat and for supply to the Members and Media;

-- Other ways and means to reduce use of paper in the Rajya Sabha Secretariat;

-- A scheme for giving incentives to MPs who opt for supply of Parliamentary papers in digital format only;

-- Any other recommendations concerned with or incidental to reduction in paper use.