Reliance Comm bags WB e-governance project

Reliance Communications has signed a master service agreement with the West Bengal government to implement an e-governance project in the state.

Reliance Communications will set up 1,860 common service centres (CSC) across the state. The centres will provide government-to- government, government-to-business, business-to-business and business-to-consumer services, a company official said.

The project covering North 24 Parganas, West Midnapur, Burdwan and Purulia districts, would benefit 26 lakh households in the state.

Reliance Communication was selected after a technical evaluation process, M N Roy principal secretary of state's Panchayat and Rural Development Ministry said.

The tie-up would establish and operate the service delivery platform for rural areas in the state under the national e-governance project, Roy said.

"The signing of MoU with West Bengal Government is a leap forward in RCOM's endeavor to enter the e-governance space and bridge the digital divide by providing ICT services in rural India," said Prakash Bajpai, chief executive officer "� enterprise business, RCOM.

RCOM's responsibilities would also include selection, training and support of the village level entrepreneurs and other operating staff, selection and setup of the common service centre (CSC) physical and ICT infrastructure, selection and implementation of the services at the CSCs along with its sales, support and financial supply chain, marketing, advertising and awareness campaign, managing all stakeholder expectation and reporting, separating the CSCs as a financial and socially profitable initiative.

Each CSC would have a minimum of one personal computer,voice/data/video communication, providing government to business, government to citizen, government to employee, business to business and business to citizen services. The CSCs would be managed by a village level entrepreneur as franchises of RCOM.

Earlier, the state government had signed an agreement with Srei Infrastructure Finance Ltd for an e-governance project.

Under the agreement, Srei will set up nearly 5,000 CSCs in rural Bengal.

The CSCs would provide an entire range of government-to-citizen (G2C) services under the national e-governance plan (NeGP).

The programme would be executed on a public private partnership (PPP) model. The agreement with Srei encompasses Darjeeling,

Jalpaiguri, Cooch Behar, Uttar Dinajpur and Dakshin Dinajpur, Malda, Murshidabad, Nadia, South 24 Parganas, East Midnapore, Bankura, Birbhum, Howrah and Hooghly.