Telangana Information Technology Minister K Taraka Rama Rao has vowed to effectively utilise Information Technology (IT) to weed out fake beneficiaries from government schemes meant for the poor, like distribution of ration cards of public distribution system (PDS) and pensions to aged citizens, widows and disabled persons.
To discuss this and various other ideas on how effectively IT can be inserted into the state's developmental schemes, the government has convened a meeting of 150 IT companies in Hyderabad on Friday, Rao stated.
Rao revealed this while interacting with representatives of Oracle, a multi-national computer technology company, in the state Secretariat in Hyderabad on Wednesday.
Rao stated that the state government is committed to extending IT services to rural areas of the state. The government will utilise IT services to issue PDS ration cards and monthly pensions to real beneficiaries of the poor in the society.
The minister said that IT-enabled schemes like E-panchayat, E-education, E-health will be made available to the people, especially in the rural areas. The government wanted to develop Telangana as the top state in IT sector, he added.
Rao, who has an MBA in E-Commerce from Baruch College City University of New York, has vowed to develop Hyderabad into a top destination for investments in both computer hardware and software businesses.
TN allocates ₹1,100 crore to distribute free laptops to students
Meanwhile, to expedite the scheme of free laptop distribution to students in the state, the Tamil Nadu government has decided to allocate ₹1,100 crore this year. The beneficiaries of the scheme are students in government high schools and colleges.
Officials in the state government said that more than 17 lakh free laptops, worth ₹2,500 crore have already been distributed to the students since 2011. And this year 5.5 lakh laptops worth ₹1,100 crore will be given to students free of cost, the officials added.
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa took the initiative to launch the free laptop distribution scheme in 2011. The state is distributing laptops to students in higher secondary schools and colleges run by the government and also other government-aided institutions.
In India, state governments in Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan have followed the scheme of distributing free laptops and tablets to students.
Even the Union government was planning to invite global tenders to provide low cost Aakash tablets to 220 million school children. The Union government is hoping to deliver at least half of the targeted 220 million Aakash tablets to students in the first half of 2014.
