Hyderabad, June 18 (IANS) The Telangana government on Thursday decided to conduct state cabinet meetings in a paperless manner.

The decision was taken at a special Cabinet meeting chaired by Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy on Thursday.

According to the Chief Minister’s Office, he granted approval for the implementation of the Telangana Digital Cabinet.

Minister for Information Technology D. Sridhar Babu distributed special tablets to the Chief Minister, Deputy Chief Minister Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka, and all ministers.

The Chief Minister personally inspected the functioning of the digital Cabinet system.

Cabinet meetings will now be conducted in a completely paperless format, improving efficiency, transparency, and sustainability.

The agenda for cabinet meetings and other documents will be provided to ministers via these tablets.

Secretaries and other officials were not invited to Thursday’s Cabinet meeting, where the Chief Minister and ministers were believed to have discussed various issues related to the implementation of welfare schemes.

The Telangana Cabinet is becoming paperless nearly two years after the Cabinet in neighbouring Andhra Pradesh switched to the e-Cabinet mode.

The Andhra Pradesh government switched to the e-Cabinet mode on August 28, 2024, with the meeting of the Council of Ministers going paperless.

Andhra Pradesh ministers were provided iPads loaded with the e-Cabinet application developed by the National Informatics Centre (NIC), New Delhi.

The Andhra Pradesh Cabinet was also paperless during the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) rule between 2014 and 2019.

Chief Minister Naidu introduced the concept of e-Cabinet meetings in 2014, about 100 days after assuming office as the first Chief Minister of bifurcated Andhra Pradesh.

Later, the YSR Congress Party government discontinued the system of e-meetings.

This time, a comprehensive application has been developed with multiple features and an end-to-end workflow.

According to officials, the paperless approach is eco-friendly and enhances operational efficiency. The features of the e-Cabinet application include online access to related information anywhere and anytime.

–IANS

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