Tamil Nadu government unveils e-seva services for village panchayats
Chennai: Villagers of 12,524 grama panchayats in Tamil Nadu would now be able to take online printouts of government certificates and can avoid travel to government offices seeking benefits. All the backward districts including Ariyalur, Nilgiris, Dharmapuri and Perambalur are covered under the project, sparing capital Chennai where the broadband penetration is high. The state on Tuesday unveiled e-seva and e-governance services for village panchayat offices by connecting civic bodies through optical cable fibre network.
The project mooted by late chief minister J. Jayalalithaa requires Rs 3,000 crore to develop broadband network and cyber infrastructure and will be a boon for rural Tamil Nadu, a senior government official said. "The joint venture between the Centre and the state is expected to empower the rural villages of Tamil Nadu, but the idea behind the project is to increase the commercial activities and enhance business," said a software-networking engineer who has served with Railtel that handles IT projects for Bharat Broadband Network Limited.
This tie-up will ensure information and communication technologies (ICT) applications such as e-Commerce, e-Banking, e-Governance, e-Education and Tele-medicine. Bharat Broadband Network Limited (BBNL) will provide the platform for high speed internet connectivity, he said. According to a press release from the secretariat, the state had entered into an agreement with BBNL for implementing Centre's rural internet connectivity programme, 'BharatNet.'
A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was 'exchanged' between the state government and BBNL in the presence of Chief Minister K. Palani-sami. Tamil Nadu IT secretary T.K. Ra-machandran and Bharatnet officials were present. Ms Jayalalithaa had then said that Centre had cleared her proposal to implement BharatNet in the state. The release also mentioned that efforts were underway for the creation of Tamil Nadu FibreNet Corporation, with a government order having been issued last year for this purpose. The project is a Centre-State collaborative project, with the states contributing free rights of way for establishing the Optical Fibre Network.
