Over 12,000 villages to benefit from Rs 1,815-cr BharatNet project: TN CM

The Centre's BharatNetproject which aims at providing highspeed broadband network to every household in village panchayats would be implemented in Tamil Nadu at a cost of Rs 1,815 crore, Chief Minister K Palaniswami said on Thursday.

Through this initiative, 12,524 village panchayats would be connected through optic-fibre network, he said at the two-day conference CONNECT organised by trade body CII.

He said under the BharatNet project all the villages would receive not less than 1Gbps speed internet service.

Palaniswami said the government would implement highspeed broadband service in cities at a cost of Rs 500 crore under TamilNet initiative.

"This project is likely to be completed over the next 18 months," he said.

Listing some salient features taken by his government, Palaniswami said in 2018-19, software exports from Tamil Nadu touched Rs 1.22 lakh crore and 6.50 lakh jobs were created.

"...in terms of job creation from software exports, Tamil Nadu is ranked among the top states," he said.

On distribution free laptops, one of the flagship schemes of the AIADMK government, he said nearly 54.19 lakh laptops were distributed to students till date.

The Chief Minister said an electronic hardware manufacturing policy would be rolled out enabling start-up companies to bring in lot of investments and jobs to further the economic development of the State.

Addressing industry captains present, Palaniswami appealed to them to offer constructive consultation for boosting investments in the information and technology sector.

"I take this opportunity to appeal to everybody present here, to extend your cooperation in establishing new IT industries in emerging technologies like blockchain and artificial intelligence," he said.