Chief Secretary Ajay Singh on Friday chaired a meeting of State-level Co-ordination Committee for BharatNet Project Phase-II at the Mantralaya here.
The Chief Secretary reviewed in detail the works taken up to ensure network connectivity of all villages in the State by 2019.
Singh directed the officials to submit the information on status of the project from district, block and village panchayat levels alongwith the assessment of connectivity speed within a forthnight.
He also directed Chhattisgarh Infotech Promotion Society (CHiPS) to hold training programmes at State an District levels.
CHiPS CEO Alex Paul Menon informed in the meeting that by 2019, an action plan had been prepared for providing network connectivity to State’s 5,987 villages with wifi facility.
The network connectivity will be used by schools, health centers and offices of Patwaris etc, he informed.
It may be recalled that CHiPS— the nodal agency of Department of Electronics & Information Technology, Government of Chhattisgarh will be getting route survey and Right of Way (RoW) clearance done for Bharat Net Phase-II project in the State.
Notably, Bharat Net is a project initiated by the Central Government and funded by Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF) with an aim to provide broadband connectivity to over two lakh fifty thousand (250,000) Gram Panchayats of India.
The project aims to provide internet access using Optical Fibre Cable (OFC) and extending it to the Gram Panchayats (GPs). The project is intended to enable the Central Government to provide e-services and e-applications nationally, transforming India into a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy is the most critical and important action item for Digital India.
The Bharat Net project is of national importance, with a highly scalable network infrastructure to provide on demand, easily affordable broadband internet connectivity of 2 Mbps to 20 Mbps for all households and on demand capacity to all institutions, to realize the vision of Digital India, in partnership with the states and the private sector, officials informed.
The Chhattisgarh Government on December 30 last year also signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Centre for the implementation of second phase of Bharat Net project .
Chief Minister Raman Singh had stated that Chhattisgarh is entering a new era of 'Digital Revolution'.
The Chief Minister was addressing a function after signing of MoU of Bharat Net Project in Naya Raipur between the State Government and Central Government.
Union Minister of State for Communication Manoj Sinha was the chief guest on the occasion.
Singh said that Bharat Net Project will bridge the 'Digital Divide' between the rural and urban regions as 85 development blocks and 5987 gram panchayats will be connected with optical fiber network. Total investment will be about Rs 1624 crore.
At present work is in progress to link about gram panchayats with optical fiber network.
The Chief Minister said that the priorities of the so-called backward regions like Abhujmargh have also changed. The residents are demanding mobile connectivity along with roads, schools and hospitals.
Singh said that three digital connectivity projects entailing an investment of Rs 3400 crore- Bastar Net, Bharat Net and Sky- are under various stages of completion.