Saturday, April 16 2005 12:15 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi: Exploiting communication technology, Parliamentary Affairs Ministry has plans to use Short Messaging Service (SMS) to call MPs to House in case there is no quorum.

The Ministry has begun an exercise of collecting and categorising the mobile phone numbers of MPs.

"The scheme was to have been launched during the 13th Lok Sabha but could not be done. The exercise for starting it in the monsoon session of the 14th Lok Sabha has begun and we are in the process of compiling the mobile numbers of all the members," Secretary, Parliamentary Affairs, V K Agnihotri said.

He said that the Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad is very keen on starting this so that Members are able to get information faster than through the earlier practice of informing them through post and telephone.

"There are together about 750 Members of Parliament in the two Houses. It would take time to collect all the phone numbers but once we have a substantial list of phone numbers, we would put the system into operation," Agnihotri said.

Sources said that most of the MPs have mobile phones and it would be easier to inform them of meetings and other programmes through SMS.

According to sources, the cue for launching this service was taken at the time of the last Lok Sabha elections when SMS was used on a large scale by political parties.

Besides, it is much easier to use SMS to inform members, who would be kept upto date on meetings and Parliamentary schedule, the sources said.

The Ministry has undertaken the exercise of grouping parliamentarians of different groups and also Ministers so that they can be easily informed through this system, sources said.

"Nowadays SMS is the fastest way of communicating and therefore use of this method would definitely speed up communication with MPs," the sources said.