Mahua Moitra row impact: Protocols for access to Digital Sansad changed

The controversy over Trinamool Congress (TMC) lawmaker Mahua Moitra sharing her log in details with businessman Darshan Hiranandani and allowing him to post Parliament questions directly to the Digital Sansad portal has prompted the Lok Sabha secretariat to change protocols for access to it.

The personal assistants (PAs) of lawmakers could earlier access a tab called “E-Notice” to file documents related to the legislative branch such as parliament questions, requests for short-duration, zero-hour discussions, draft bills, amendments, etc through their accounts on Digital Sansad. They can now only save notices as drafts and the lawmakers have to submit/file them from their accounts, HT has learnt.

The Times of India was the first to report the change in the protocol.

The PAs and staff of lawmakers will still have their own accounts with the Digital Sansad portal and OTP (one-time password) delivered on their mobile numbers. Earlier, when they posted notices, the second OTP that was generated to file the notices was sent to their mobile numbers. Now, the option to post notices has been blocked on PAs’ accounts.

Now, when the lawmakers log into their Digital Sansad account, OTP is sent to their mobile numbers. When they have to file notices, another OTP is generated.

Earlier, when a lawmaker received documents from the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha secretariats, including committee reports and publications, on their Sansad email address (which is separate from the Digital Sansad portal), they were also synced with the “Messages” tab on their PAs’ Sansad Portal account. Now, the “Messages” tab has disappeared from the PAs’ account on the Sansad Portal. This “Messages” tab did not require another OTP earlier.

PAs and staff can still access the OTP. The OTP is sent to lawmakers phone numbers and their registered email addresses. This email addresses are those registered on the Digital Sansad portal and can be a non-government email addresses as well.

To sign in to the Sansad email address, the MPs have to use Kavach, an authenticator app similar to Google Authenticator. For Kavach, an MP can give their mobile number along with their PAs. Thus, the staff then has access to the Sansad email, and through that, to the MP’s Digital Sansad account.

While the OTPs to mobiles are generated almost instantaneously, it can take up to 45 minutes for the OTP to be sent to the Sansad email address.

At least two people HT spoke to pointed out that the MPs’ staff needs access to the Digital Sansad portal because the MPs usually do not have enough time to perform all these tasks and delegation is necessary.

A bulletin released on November 10 by the Lok Sabha secretary general Utpal Kumar Singh noted that as replies to questions are “login and password protected on the Members’ Portal”, the members have to “maintain confidentiality of the replies” and not share them with others until the Question Hour is over.

In the Moitra case, the TMC MP argued that while she shared her log in details with Hiranandani, the OTP still came on her phone which she subsequently shared with him.

The new protocol mandates an MP’s oversight by way of sending an OTP. It is not clear how it prevents the MPs from sharing the OTP with someone else, which is what happened in Moitra’s case, or from providing a phone number which remains with the staff.