Proceedings in the legislative assembly are not only an important part of our democratic process, but also help us understand how our MLAs have been doing in the past 5 years – what issues have been raised by them and what issues matter to them.

For the 14th Legislative Assembly of Karnataka (2013-2018), you can find the proceedings on OpenCity.in in readable format here.

However, for the 15th Legislative Assembly (2018-2023), the proceedings were in pdf format. Thanks to Omshivaprakash, co-founder of Sanchaya, SanchiSpeak and Linuxayana, we were able to obtain the scanned pdfs in text format. The assembly proceedings are split into two datasets and this explainer is about how to get the proceedings specific to MLAs of Bengaluru constituencies.

Assembly questions and answers

Assembly questions and answers are in this dataset. This contains resources for each day of assembly proceedings in the past five years. There are a total of 289 resource files.

To find out what your MLA has been doing, look for a resource named after your MLA. That file contains details of the file name and line number where a question was asked by the MLA. Note that only Bengaluru constituency MLAs are indexed. The names of the MLAs for Bangalore South as well Vijayanagar is M. Krishnappa, so the search includes only Krishnappa.

Below is an example of how to search:

1. To look for how Krishna Byre Gowda, MLA from Byatarayanapura has been doing, get the file with name Krishna Byre Gowda. In that file you can see that he was mentioned 69 times in the past 5 years. The most recent mention is:
   File 08122020_p1_djvu.txt at line 7515
   The file name is of format DDMMYYYY_<part num>_djvu.txt. This means that the MLA was last mentioned on 08th Dec 2020, part 1.
2. The file for 8th Dec 2020, part 1 can be found here. You can download the file and look at line 140652.
3. The line has the following details:
   ಯಾವ ಯಾವ ಕಾಮಗಾರಿಯ ಪ್ರಗತಿ (ಭೌಶಿಕ ಮತ್ತು ಆರ್ಥಿಕ) ಯಾವ ಹೆ೦ತದಲ್ಲಿದೆ; ಕಾಮಗಾರಿಗಳು ಯಾವಾಗ ಪೂರ್ಣಗೊಳ್ಳುವುವು; (ವಿಷರ ನೀಡುವುದು)
   This translates to seeking of information on progress on different projects (infrastructure and economic), what state they are in and when they are to be finished.

Assembly List of Businesses

Assembly list of business are those questions that are listed for each session at the start of the session. MLAs can include the topics of their interest and have ministers answer their queries. There are a total of 20 resource files contained in this dataset.

To find out what your MLA has been interested in and wanted to raise, look for a resource named after your MLA. That file contains details of the file name and line number where a question was asked by the MLA.

Below is an example of how to search.

1. To look for what issues raised by Sowmya Reddy, MLA from Jayanagar, look for the file with her name. She is mentioned twice in the past five years. The mention is:
   File kla-assembly-15-session-2-dec-2018-all.txt at line 3166
   This means that the MLA was mentioned in the session in Dec 2018.
2. The file for List of Business for the session in Dec 2018 can be found here. You can download the file and look for line 3166.
3. The line mentioned above notes the following:
   ್ರೀಮತಿ ಸೌಮ್ಯಾ ರೆಡ್ಡಿ ಅವರು – ರಾಜ್ಯದಲ್ಲಿ ಪ್ಲಾಸ್ಟಿಕ್‌ ಬ್ಯಾನ್‌ ಮಾಡಲು ಸರ್ಕಾರ ಆದೇಶ ಹೊರಡಿಸಿದ್ದರೂ ಪ್ಲಾಸ್ಟಿಕ್‌ ಬಳಕೆ ಮುಂದುವರೆದಿರುವ ಬಗ್ಗೆ ಮಾನ್ಯ ವಸತಿ ಮತ್ತು ನಗರಾಭಿವೃದ್ಧಿಸಚಿವರ ಗಮನ ಸೆಳೆಯುವುದು.
   Translated: Smt. Sowmya Reddy calls the attention of the Housing and Urban development minister to the continued use of plastic despite there being a state-level ban in place.
   

ADR India (Association for Democratic Reforms) has published a detailed analysis of MLAs’ records in assembly as well as important information from the affidavits of the candidates.