Union IT minister requests Bihar CM to intervene personally to resolve some issues quickly

PATNA: The union minister communication and IT Ravi Shankar Prasad has urged the Bihar CM Nitish Kumar to personally intervene to resolve some issues related to the implementation of its programmes/schemes in Bihar. The inordinate delay has been made in setting up National Institute of Electronics and Information technology (NIELIT), developing software technology parks of India (STPI) in Bihar and tardy progress in Unique identification Authority of India (UIDAI) schemes.
In a recent letter addressed to the CM Nitish Kumar, union minister Prasad said: "It needs your intervention to be resolved quickly."
The four page letter said that the department of IT, government of Bihar, had conveyed that the Bihar government had earmarked a piece of land measuring 250 acres for setting up of Electronics manufacturing cluster in Rajgir in Nalanda district way back in October 8, 2014."However, no proposal in this regard has so far been received in spite of many follow ups by my department", Prasad said in a letter to the CM.
"The department of Electronics and IT has accorded in principle approval on August 7, 2015 for setting up of greenfield electronic manufacturing cluster (EMC) at Abgilla village in Gaurchak Patna district over an area of 21.11 acres, being promoted by M/s AV Ispat private limited as a chief promoter. However, in spite of several follow ups, no final application has been submitted in this regard”, minister said.
The minister further said that the land allotment for opening of NIELIT extension centre at Muzaffarpur and Buxar has yet not been finalised. Though the Bihar government has allotted 15 acres of land to NIELIT, free of cost, for setting up of NIELIT permanent campus at Bihta in Patna district out of which 12.36 acres land has been made free of encroachment and construction has already started whereas land measuring 2.64 acre is still under encroachment and is required to be made encroachment free, he said.
The letter addressed to the CM, Prasad said that the assurances has been given for providing of the land to Software Technology parks of India (STPI) for setting up its centres in the premises of Bhagalpur and Darbhanga engineering colleges. “I need to emphasize that earlier, a public assurances was given to provide land and built up space in the local engineering colleges for starting STPI centres at Bhagalpur and Darbhanga and also for the NIELIT centres in Buxar and Muzaffarpur”, he said.
Regarding UIDAI, he said that in Bihar 6.67 crore Adhaars has been generated against 10.98 crore population projected for 2015. Approximately four crore people in Bihar need to be given Adhaars at the earliest in a time bound manner so that they can use them for receiving various government benefits.
The letter further said that the most of the enrolments in Bihar are done by non-state registrars (such as Banks, common service centres etc). With increase in Adhaar saturation, as the footfall for the enrolments is decreasing, it is becoming unviable for non state registrars to continue the enrolment work further, for residual population as well as new borns. Most of the states such as Maharashtra, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh have set up their own enrolment centres in the fields to ensure the Aadhaar enrolment and update services facilities are available to public at convenient locations, letter said.
The letter further said that common service centres (CSCs) are integral part of ‘Digital India’ initiatve to enable citizens to access various government to citizens(G2C) and business to citizens (B2C) service close to their place of residence. GOI envisages at least ine CSC in each panchayat across the country to be set up in Bihar. “In case of Bihar, presently there are hardly any G2C services which are being delivered to citizens through CSCs”, letter said .
“ I have made personal requests to you, in this regard, for expediting the pending issues. These initiatives will only encourage greater opportunities for young people of Bihar , for IT skilling delivery of services, software products and above all, creating employment”, minister Prasad said in a letter to Bihar CM Nitish Kumar.