Hon’ble Chief Minister of Tripura, Dr. Manik Saha, launched eCabinet Solution of NIC for the automation of Cabinet meetings in the State at Agartala on Wednesday, 27 September 2023 to promote digital infrastructure development and digitisation of government services and information. eCabinet system digitalizes cabinet activities and promotes paperless processes by enabling smart Governance using technology.
Tripura has thus become the fourth state—and second in the Northeast— after Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh and Arunachal Pradesh, to have introduced an e-cabinet system. All future cabinet meetings in the state will be paperless, reducing the carbon footprint and environmental degradation in the process, with ministers and bureaucrats using tablets.
In the debut e-cabinet meeting, the government approved a proposal to procure a loan of Rs 160 crore from the Asian Development Bank, which has earlier provided soft loans with low interest rates to the government and partnered with it in several developmental projects. The new Asian Development Bank (ADB) fund will be used by the tourism and urban development department for boosting infrastructure and fostering an ecology of sustainable livelihood generation, Tourism Minister Sushanta Chowdhury said.
Hon’ble Chief Minister said the e-cabinet would follow a similar model introduced in Uttarakhand. The e-cabinet system was launched by executives of the NIC as well as the state’s information and cultural affairs department. He added that digitisation would bolster e-governance and align the state’s development journey with the national Digital India initiative. The shift will increase transparency, efficiency and accountability. He further explained that the e-cabinet app would have features to facilitate uploading of cabinet memos marked with date and time and that ministers, the chief secretary, secretaries and other officials would be able to review and approve them online.
The government also rolled out honorary commendations to departments that have gone paperless as part of 100 per cent e-office adoption. Out of 94 government departments that are being trained in paperless operations, 41 got the commendations on Wednesday.
