MeitY expenditure under Digital India at Rs 3,328 cr in 2018-19: Prasad

The electronics and IT ministry's expenditure under the Digital India programme more than doubled to over Rs 3,328 crore in FY2018-19 from the previous fiscal, Parliament was informed Thursday.

"The expenditure by Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) under Digital India programme was Rs 1,452.70 crore (FY2015-16), Rs 1,217.65 crore (FY2016-17), Rs 1,407.19 crore (FY2017-18) and Rs 3,328.57 crore (FY2018-19)," Electronics and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said in a written reply to the Rajya Sabha.

Digital India is an umbrella programme that covers multiple projects of various ministries and government departments.

"Each project has its own budgetary requirement and accordingly, project-plan has been charted out by the implementing Ministry/departments and budget details are being maintained by concerned ministries/departments and states/union territories," the minister said.

Prasad said under the Digital India programme, the Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) has effectively utilised digital technologies to transform lives of people, while ensuring digital inclusion of all the segments.

He pointed out that 123 crore (as on June 24, 2019) residents have been provided with biometric-based digital identity as compared to 61 crore in 2013-14.

"Aadhaar combined with Digital Locker, eSign, and various forms of digital payments have paved the way for common man getting services on his mobile instead of having to run to multiple government offices," he said.

Also, digital payment transactions have grown multi-fold from 316 crore transactions in 2014-15 to 2,182 crore transactions in 2018-19.

Prasad said under the Modified Special Incentive Package (M-SIPS), 201 applications with proposed investment of about Rs 52,083 crore have been approved, while 20 applications with proposed investments of about Rs 5,048 crore have been recommended by the Appraisal Committee for approval.