Lok Sabha, MeitY Sign MoU to Launch ‘Sansad Bhashini’ for AI-Powered Multilingual Parliamentary Operations

The Lok Sabha Secretariat and the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to develop Sansad Bhashini, AI-driven in-house solutions to streamline parliamentary operations in multilingual languages.

The signing took place in the presence of Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla and Union Minister for MeitY Ashwini Vaishnaw, as reported by PTI.

Sansad will provide its corpus of legislative records for training and fine-tuning these AI solutions, while Bhashini will contribute translation capabilities and technical expertise.

संसद से जुड़े कार्यों का संचालन सुगम हो, माननीय सदस्यों को simultaneously यानि एक ही समय पर कई भाषाओं में कार्यवाही उपलब्ध हो सके, इसके लिए “संसद भाषिणी” पहल उपयोगी सिद्ध हो रही है।
आज केन्द्रीय इलेक्ट्रॉनिक्स एवं सूचना प्रौद्योगिकी मंत्री श्री @AshwiniVaishnaw जी की उपस्थिति में… pic.twitter.com/KPQUV2BpNW

The initiative will integrate AI tools with parliamentary data, enabling seamless access to historical debates and legislative records in multiple languages. 

Parliamentary resources provided by Sansad will be used to train and fine-tune AI tools, while Bhashini will contribute translation capabilities and technical expertise.

As part of Sansad Bhashini, AI-powered solutions will include real-time translation of legacy debate documents, agenda files, and committee meetings into regional languages, ensuring greater accessibility. 

A smart chatbot for the Parliament website will assist members and officials in retrieving procedural rules and documents, offering instant, accurate responses and improving efficiency over time.

Additionally, an advanced speech-to-text system will transcribe parliamentary debates in real-time, reducing documentation challenges and ensuring easy reference. 

The initiative will also introduce speech-to-speech conversion with live translation, allowing immediate multilingual access to discussions and debates, along with automatic summarisation for faster decision-making.

Vaishnaw thanked Lok Sabha Speaker Shri Om Birla for his leadership, expressing confidence that Sansad Bhashini would revolutionise parliamentary processes through AI, enhancing multilingual accessibility and strengthening India’s tech-driven governance.

The signing ceremony was attended by Shri Utpal Kumar Singh, Secretary-General of Lok Sabha, and Shri Gaurav Goyal, Joint Secretary of the Lok Sabha Secretariat, who signed the MoU on behalf of the Secretariat.

In January, ahead of the Panchayat to Parliament 2.0 event, Om Birla conducted a live demonstration of the Sansad-Bhashini Speech-to-Speech translation system. The test, carried out in collaboration with the Bhashini team, included the participation of women representatives from Panchayats.

The government’s AI-powered language translation platform, Bhashini, is also translating the daily agenda papers of the Parliament into 10 regional languages. The team has already translated around 1,000 debates into Hindi and English by digitising 18,000 hours of speech data.

Amitabh Nag, the CEO of Bhashini, said in a post that this is the beginning of a historic co-creation journey with Indian Parliament for Sansad-Bhashini.