State-run Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) is planning to offer Internet bandwidth to the Members of Parliament (MPs) to digitally empower people in their constituencies through the Sansad Adarsh Gram Yojna initiative under the Member of Parliament Local Area Development (MPLAD) scheme.
According to ET report, in a letter dated July 25, 2016, BSNL chairman Anupam Shrivastava sought support from all the 543 parliamentarians individually to provision Wi-Fi services in their respective constituencies or villages to accelerate Digital India programme as part of government-to-government (G2G) initiative.
“We have written to all the members of Parliament to purchase bulk bandwidth from us using MPLAD funds. This is going to be a win-win situation as BSNL will put down ducts, offer optic fibre connectivity and undertake Wi-Fi hotspots installation via a systems integrator as well as round-the-clock monitoring,” said Shrivastava.
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Sansad Adarsh Gram Yojna, or SAGY, is a rural development program, launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the birth anniversary of Jayaprakash Narayan on October 11, 2014, to facilitate village-level empowerment in a speedier manner.
Till now, as many as 35 villages have been connected through the Wi-Fi Radio Access Network with lawmakers such as Nitin Gadkari, Devendra Fadnavis, Ravi Shankar Prasad, Piyush Goyal, Praful Patel, Ajay Sancheti and Lok Sabha Speaker Sumita Mahajan approaching the state-owned telco.