The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh News : Broadband link for all villages in two years

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Jan 04, 2005

Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

Broadband link for all villages in two years

By Our Special Correspondent

HYDERABAD, JAN. 3. In a major effort, the State Cabinet at its meeting on Monday approved a proposal to provide broadband connectivity to all villages within two years, enabling the State to become the first one to cross such a milestone in the country.

Briefing presspersons after the Cabinet meeting, the Information Minister, Mohd. Ali Shabbir, said the Rs. 400-crore project, Andhra Pradesh Broadband Network, to be implemented with private participation, would provide services with a minimum bandwidth of two Mbps, at a base tariff of Rs. 300 per quarter.

The network will have optic fibre connectivity right up to the village level, linking State, district and mandal headquarters and villages. The network will provide broadband services to 40,000 Government offices, enabling all Government departments to deliver convenient citizen services through eSeva centres, Rajiv Internet Village Kiosks and web-based online services.

It would ensure widespread availability of broadband services at very low and affordable rate taking Government services to the doorsteps of citizens and trigger significant economic activity, he said. The network will be established by a consortium of companies led by Aksh Broadband Limited and including Raitel Corp. India, Tata Indicomm/VSNL, Incable Network (Andhra), Spectranet and Nuziveedu Seeds. These were short-listed from 36 companies that have shown interest. The promoters would invest Rs. 150 crores and the State Government would have a share of Rs. 25 crores. The remaining Rs. 225 crores is to be raised from Indian and foreign financial institutions.

Polls to WUAs soon

The Cabinet decided to conduct elections to the Water Users Associations (WUAs) in February in the remaining nine districts where they were not held and co-opt members of Panchayat Raj institutions to the WUAs. The nine districts are Krishna, Guntur, Prakasam, Nellore, Anantapur, Cuddapah, Kurnool, Khammam and Nalgonda.

Mr. Shabbir said some changes had been approved and gram panchayats would now nominate two of their members maintaining gender equality to the Minor WUAs. This would apply to the elected WUAs too.

Mr. Shabbir said the Cabinet also resolved to shift the focus of the farmers' organisations from "works" to "water management" for better water use efficiency and increased agriculture production.

The WUAs had been allowed to take up the operation and maintenance works up to Rs. 1 lakh with the amount collected as water tax.

Saibaba thanked

He said all Cabinet Ministers thanked Sri Satya Saibaba of Puttaparthi for proposing to take up two drinking water supply schemes, Rs. 300-crore one in East and West Godavari districts and Rs. 250-crore one in Madikasera, Penugonda and Hindupur Assembly segments of Anantapur district. It was also decided to allot three tmcft of water from the Tungabhadra High Level Canal modernisation programme for the Rs. 270-crore scheme in Anantapur, for which the pipelines were in place.

The Cabinet approved creation of additional post of Vice-Chairman to the AP State Council for Higher Education and include ViceChancellors of seven universities as ex-officio members. These were Osmania, Andhra, Sri Venkateswara, Sri Krishnadevaraya, Nagarjuna, Kakatiya and Jawaharlal Nehru Technological universities.

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