Coming soon: House proceedings live on your smartphones

 The proceedings of the Karnataka Legislature will soon be available at the click of a button. New age media will be also adopted to introduce mobile apps, enabling viewers to watch the entire proceedings on a smartphone.

Unlike the proceedings of the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha, which are broadcast live on a dedicated channel, the proceedings of the Legislative Assembly and the Council will be streamed live on the Internet, using robotic cameras inside the Houses.

The proceedings will be streamed live on the State government websites, including the website of the Karnataka Legislature. Private TV channels and the Doordarshan will also be given real-time access to the same.

On July 20, a committee comprising Assembly Speaker Kagodu Thimmappa, Legislative Council Chairman D H Shankaramurthy, Law and Parliamentary Affairs Minister T B Jayachandra and Information Minister Roshan Baig was formed. The committee, which watched a presentation by the Government of India enterprise Broadcast Engineering Consultants India Ltd (BECIL), has given its in-principle approval to the ‘TV coverage - archiving and streaming of Assembly and Council proceedings’ project proposal.

Usha Mangalgi, manager, BECIL regional office, said that as the state governments did not have permission to own uplinking systems, there was no provision for a state-owned channel. Only Parliament has its own uplinking system, aside from a studio.

Hence it was decided to record, store, and stream the proceedings online. Like in Parliament, robotic cameras will be installed inside both Houses, thereby doing away with camerapersons. The minute a member stands up to speak, the mike will sense it and three cameras will zoom into him/her. Real-time streaming of the same will happen with the signal extending to all private television channels and the Doordarshan. Cable TV networks will be given the option to purchase the content and air it live, too.

Mangalgi, however, said the exciting part of the project was the live streaming of the proceedings on the Internet. “People can watch the proceedings anytime, anywhere. We will also be archiving the entire content, including the proceedings of the previous years. We intend to introduce a few mobile apps for this purpose,” she said.

Mangalgi said Maharashtra had signed a letter of intent with BECIL and the project would begin shortly. The entire facility can be set up within six months, she said. Materials, including cameras, camera heads, tripods, mutli-monitoring systems will be imported from the US, the UK and Singapore. 

Speaker Thimmappa said the ball had been set rolling for the long-pending proposal.

‘Discussion in next Assembly session’ 

Legislative Assembly Speaker Kagodu Thimmappa has said that the proposal on launching a dedicated channel to air State legislature proceedings would be taken up in the next Assembly session.

Speaking to mediapersons in Mangaluru on Wednesday, the Speaker said that a team consisting of the Council Chairperson, Minister for Information and Law and himself had been to Delhi to look into the functioning of the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha channels recently.

“About Rs 25 crore would be required to start the channel. The Council and Assembly will discuss the pros and cons of the proposal,” he said.