The minister said that under the digital India programme, the ministry of panchayati raj is implementing the e-panchayat mission mode project across all states and union territories of the country.
The Government is taking steps to introduce artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support the functioning of gram panchayats, the union minister for panchayati raj, Rajiv Ranjan Singh said in a written reply in Rajya Sabha on Wednesday.
The minister said that the ministry of panchayati raj has launched SabhaSaar, an AI-powered meeting-summarisation tool that generates structured minutes of meetings from gram sabha and other panchayat meetings using audio/video recordings. SabhaSaar uses advanced natural language processing (NLP) technologies and is integrated with BHASHINI, the National Language Translation Mission of MeitY, to provide multilingual support.
SabhaSaar has been made available to all states and union territories and gram panchayats are progressively adopting the tool for summarisation of meetings. As part of the initial rollout, all 1,194 Gram Panchayats of Tripura were encouraged to use the tool for the Special Gram Sabhas on 15 August 2025. A total of 12,667 gram panchayats used SabhaSaar on as on 15 August 2025, which further increased to 77,198 gram panchayats during the 2 October 2025 gram sabha. The minister sais that as on 28 November, a total of 92,034 gram panchayats have used the SabhaSaar tool for automated meeting summarisation.
SabhaSaar is integrated with BHASHINI, the National Language Translation Mission, and currently supports 22 Indian languages for text-to-text translation and 13 Indian languages for voice-to-text transcription, ensuring accessibility across diverse linguistic regions.
Digital India
Further, in reply to a separate question, the minister said that under the digital India programme, the ministry of panchayati raj is implementing the e-panchayat mission mode project (MMP) across all states and union territories of the country. He said that this initiative aims to revamp the functioning of panchayats, making them more transparent, accountable, and effective.
He said that as part of this initiative, the ministry is operating the eGramSwaraj, an online planning and accounting application designed to simplify Panchayat activities such as planning, budgeting and accounting.
The ministry of panchayati raj has also integrated eGramSwaraj with the public financial management system (PFMS) for gram panchayats (GPs) to make online payments to vendors/service providers. The minister added that panchayats use the eGramSwaraj portal to prepare and upload annual panchayat development plans.
Bharat Net Project
Further, the minister told the Rajya Sabha that the Bharat Net project is being implemented by department of telecommunications (DoT) in a phased manner to provide broadband connectivity to all gram panchayats in the country. So far, 2.18 lakh gram panchayats/ traditional local bodies or TLBs (out of a total of 2.69 lakh GPs/TLBs) have been made service-ready for providing high-speed internet services under the BharatNet project.
The minister said that to further improve digital connectivity, the amended Bharat Net programme was approved by the cabinet in August 2023 for the upgradation of the existing network of Bharat Net phase-I and phase-II and the creation of a network in the remaining gram panchayats.
According to the minister, all States are making efforts to implement e-Panchayat MMP, based on their available resources. However, he said, states are at different stages of implementing these applications due to difference in the level of preparedness of panchayats across the country.
Image: Digital Empowerment Foundation
