NEW DELHI, June 26: IT and Electronics Minister Ravi
Shankar Prasad Thursday said in the Rajya Sabha that the
Government will take “tough action” if village entrepreneurs
are found faking number of rural people trained under the
Pradhan Mantri Gramin Digital Shaksharta Abhiyan (PMGDISHA).
Observing that there is “digital hunger” in rural India,
the Minister said the government target is to make one lakh
digital villages in the country and it is working with
Railways to lay the Optical fibre network at the gram level.
“It is a very important scheme (PMGDISHA). There is a
third party audit. If a member has any specific information
about faking numbers, I want to assure him that I will take
firm measure. If anyone has faked numbers, I will take tough
action,” Prasad said during the Question Hour.
The Minister said the government has already trained 2.53
crore people under the scheme, while the target is 6 crore.
“Digital India envisages all inclusive India. It works at
various levels. We thought that unless people don’t have
digital literacy, they cannot use digital equipments. During
the pilot, we trained 10 lakh people and later 53 lakh and now
expanding further,” he added.
To a query on number of scheduled castes and scheduled
tribes trained under the PMGDISHA, the Minister said he does
not have details in hand.
However, he said digital empowerment cannot be successful
unless weaker sections are covered.
The minister mentioned that the number of Common Service
Centres have been increased from 80,000 to 3.5 lakh. About Rs
70,000 crore has been transacted at gram panchayat level.
On scaling up of digital India, Prasad said, “I know for
sure it has become a kind of movement. Therefore, we are
proposing to scale it up further along with digital villages
because we really want to empower ordinary Indians.”
The Railways and the IT and Electronic ministries are
working together to lay Optical fibre network at gram level.
“We are going to make 1 lakh digital villages in the
country. We will give WiFi. We want to speed this up. In the
country, there is a digital hunger in rural areas,” he added.
(PTI)
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