Information and Broadcasting Minister Prakash Javadekar on Friday launched the free news SMS service of AIR News Services Division in five languages, including Marathi, Sanskrit, Dogri and Nepali besides Hindi.
Javadekar said the SMS service is aimed at providing important news to the subscribers in their preferred language on their mobile phones.
He suggested that AIR should aim to disseminate news in other regional languages through the SMS service and run a campaign through newspapers and Doordarshan News to create awareness about the service.
This would enable a large cross section of society to access news on real time basis.
Referring to the vision outlined by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 'Digital India', Javadekar said that the SMS service initiated today by All India Radio constituted a critical component of the 'Communicating India'.
'Communicating India' was an important component of an outreach mechanism so as to enable the flow of quality information to the people across platforms.
Commenting on Digital India, Javadekar said it is Prime Minister Modi's dream project and added that its objective is to enable people to communicate through digital mode.
The AIR had launched an SMS service in English on September 9 last year to provide AIR News on mobile sets to its subscribers free of cost which has already touched the database of over three lakh subscribers.
