Lok Sabha Question No. 1612 (UNSTARRED), answered on 2020-09-21
Subject: Digital India Programme
Ministry: ELECTRONICS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
Asked by: T.N. Prathapan

## GOVERNMENT OF INDIA MINISTRY OF ELECTRONICS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

## LOK SABHA UNSTARRED QUESTION NO. 1612

TO BE ANSWERED ON: 21.09.2020

## DIGITAL INDIA PROGRAMME

## 1612:   SHRI T.N.  PRATHAPAN:

Will the Minister of ELECTRONICS & INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY be pleased to state: -

- (a) whether the Government has any schemes and projects to increase the connectivity of rural areas / villages through information and service centres and if so, the details thereof;
- (b) whether the Government has decided to distribute such centres and service hubs  to the NGOs working in similar sectors and if so, the details thereof;
- (c) the current status of Digital India Programme across the country; and
- (d) the manner in which the aforesaid program has impacted the rural sector?

## ANSWER

## THE MINISTER OF STATE FOR ELECTRONICS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY (SHRI SANJAY DHOTRE)

- (a):  Ministry of Electronics and Information Technologyis implementing the Common Services Centre (CSC) programme under pillar-3 of Digital India. The programme aims to set-up at-least one  CSC  at  2.50  lakh  Gram  Panchayats  (GP)  across  the  country,  for  deliveryof  various Government to Citizen (G2C) and other citizen-centric e-Services to citizens. It is aself-sustainable entrepreneurship modelwhich is run by Village Level Entrepreneurs (VLEs). As on July, 2020, total  3.64  lakh  functional  CSCs across the country, of which, 2.66 lakhare functional at Gram Panchayat (GP) level.
- (b):    Any  individual/citizen  having  capacity  of  establishing  a  centre  along  with  necessary infrastructure to deliver services to citizen in the locality, can apply online for registration.
- (c):    The current status of Digital India Programme across the country is placed at Annexure.
- (d):   Digitisation and technology can facilitate access and availability of more and more services and products be made available to meet the rising aspirations of the unreached rural India. This is being  driven  through  the  government's  Digital  India  programme.  Digital  India  programme  is facilitating some of the key needs of rural India including e-governance services, banking and financial services, educational and healthcare services, mobile/DTH recharge, e-ticketing services, online  shopping,  etc.,  through  its  common  service  centres  run  by  village-level  entrepreneurs (VLEs) at the village and gram panchayat level.

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## Annexure

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), Government of India has initiated the 'Digital  India'  programme  with  the  vision  to  transform  India  into  a  digitally  empowered  society  and knowledge economy. Digital India is an umbrella programme that covers multiple projects of various Central Ministries/Departments & States/UTs. The present status of some of the key initiatives undertaken by MeitY under Digital India programme is as follows:

- Aadhaar: Aadhaar provides 12 digit biometric and demographic based  identity that  is  unique,  lifelong, online and authenticable. Further to give statutory backing to Aadhaar 'The Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Act, 2016' was notified on 26 th  March 2016. Over 126+ crore residents have been enrolled.
- Common Services Centre (CSC): The Common Services Centres, which are kiosks for delivery of G2C Services, are being opened at each of 2,50,000 Gram Panchayats(GP). So far, 3.64 Lakh Common Services Centre are functional and are providing eServices; Out of this, 2.66 lakh are functional at GP level.
- Meghraj and CSP: As part of the Digital India program, Government of India embarked upon an ambitious initiative  known  as  MeghRaj,  to  utilize  and  harness  the  benefits  of  Cloud  Computing.  To  fast  track  the adoption of cloud computing MeitY, Government of India has empanelled cloud service offerings of the 12 Cloud Service Providers under different deployment models viz. Public Cloud, Virtual Private Cloud and Government Community Cloud.
- Digital locker: Digital Locker provides an ecosystem with collection of repositories and gateways for issuers to upload the documents in the digital repositories. So far, 4.57 crore registered user of DigiLocker. 410 crore authentic documents have been issued. 172 Issuers and 53 Requestor organizations have been on-boarded.
- Open Govt. Data Platform: Open Government Data (OGD) Platform is a platform for supporting Open Data initiative of Government of India. It intends to increase transparency in the functioning of Government and also open avenues for many more innovative usages of Government Data to give different perspective. Currently, 4,14,937 resources under 8,591 catalogs published by 163 Ministries/Departments& State/UTs.
- Jeevan Pramaan: Digital Life Certificate for Pensioners scheme known as Jeevan Pramaan envisages to digitize  the  whole  process  of  securing  the  life  certificate.  It  is  a  biometric  enabled  digital  service  for pensioners.  With this initiative, the pensioner is no more required to physically present himself or herself in front of disbursing agency or the certification authority.  Over 3.57 crore Digital Life certificates have been processed since 2014.
- Online Registration System(ORS)/eHospital: Online Registration System (ORS) under eHospital includes online appointment and registration by new patients, viewing of lab reports, checking the status of blood availability and integration with payment gateway (PayGov).  Till date, 33.37 lakh online appointments have been made in 242 Hospitals through ORS.
- NCOG-  GIS  Applications: National  Centre  of  Geo-informatics  (NCoG)  project,  is  a  GIS  platform developed for sharing, collaboration, location based analytics and decision support system for Departments. So far, 516 applications across various domains are operational.
- Unified Mobile Application for New-Age Governance (UMANG): UMANG has been developed as a single mobile platform to deliver major Government services with Core Platform integrated with Aadhaar,
- DigiLocker, PayGov, Rapid Assessment System (RAS) etc. About 1323 services from 144 departments(Central & State) are already available on UMANG platform.
- MyGov: MyGov is a first-of-its-kind citizen engagement platform for participatory governance in India. MyGov aims  to  facilitate  a  dialogue  between  citizens  and  Government,  bringing  citizens  closer  to  the Government and bringing the Government closer to the citizens it serves, via this platform. Presently, over 1.34 Crore users are registered with MyGov, participating in various activities hosted on MyGov platform.
- Pradhan Mantri Gramin Digital Saksharta Abhiyaan(PMGDISHA): The Government has approved a new scheme titled 'Pradhan Mantri Gramin Digital Saksharta Abhiyan (PMGDISHA)' in February, 2017 to usher in digital literacy in rural India by covering 6 Crore rural households (one person per household). As on date, over 2.97 crore candidates have been trained under PMGDISHA scheme, out of which more than 2.15 crore candidates have been certified.

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