Chief Minister Raman Singh on Saturday announced that all regular students of colleges in their final year in Chhattisgarh will be provided benefit of the Sanchar Kranti Yojana (SKY) project under the first phase of the programme by providing them smart phones.
The Chief Minister in a review meeting held here also directed to celebrate 'Mobile Tihar' in the entire State in July 2018.
The ITI and Diploma course students have also been included in the SKY scheme for distrbution of household smartphone.
A total of 5 lakh students will be beneficiaries of the scheme.
Notably, the Chhattisgarh Government's preliminary assessment also indicates that urban areas, approximately 14,000 villages will come under network connectivity and approximately 50.8 lakh Smartphones will be distributed under its CG-SKY scheme.
As per the above categorization, the Government plans to initiate the Smartphone distribution by April 2018 and complete 100% Smartphone distribution by the end of March 2019, officials informed.
For ease of distribution and in order to ensure effective implementation, the distribution period has been divided into two stages with the first such stage witnessing distribution of approximately 48 lakh Smartphones by end of August 2018 and the second stage witnessing distribution of the remaining approximately 2,80 lakh Smartphones by end of March 2019.
The scheme would cover all villages and towns in the State of Chhattisgarh, except those villages having less than 1,000 population and not having connectivity. It may be noted that villages with less than 1,000 population, but having connectivity shall be considered for the CG-SKY, officials informed.
All Urban poor households in the state of Chhattisgarh as identified by the concerned department are to be covered under the scheme.
The e-KYC/ KYC of the proposed beneficiaries needs to be done at the Distribution Centres and Smartphones/ SIM cards must be distributed only after completion of e-KYC/ KYC.
The Government has taken a leap forward to design the Sanchar Kranti Yojna (CG-SKY) for providing a solution to improve the telecom connectivity in the state of Chhattisgarh by incentivizing the telecom operators to install Cell-Sites, they informed.
The primary objective is to ensure the mobile network connectivity is extended to all villages in state of Chhattisgarh with a population of 1000 or above as per the 2011 census and to further strengthen network coverage in all towns and villages, which already have coverage by either erecting new telecom towers or upgradation of existing towers.