Pranab Mukherjee Declares Kerala As India's First Fully Digital State with multiple accomplishments in its pocket.

President Pranab Mukherjee will launch the Digital Empowerment Campaign and declare Kerala a digital state during his visit to the state on Saturday. It will coincide with the inauguration of UL Cyber Park, Kozhikode, the first IT park set up by a labour cooperative society in the country.

"As part of the campaign, around 40,000 student police cadets (SPCs) from 400 schools will train over 10 lakh people in panchayats across the state. The campaign envisages to bridge digital divide by 2020," said state IT Mission director Mohammed Y Safirullah. The pilot phase of the project will make 10,000 people digital literates in a span of four months. Tablets were provided to the students in August, as part of the training ahead of the campaign.

By virtue of its proactive policies and initiatives, Kerala has emerged as first e-literate state. Akshaya and IT@School projects, both launched in 2002, were landmark initiatives in digital literacy in the state, said Safirullah. "More than 33 lakh people benefited from Akshaya project so far. Over 2,500 Akshaya common service centres across rural and urban areas, has helped generate awareness regarding e-governance. Also, around 39 lakh students from 12,600 schools were trained under the IT@School project," he added.

Kerala is the first state to complete the National Optic Fibre Network (NOFN) project, initiated in 2011, in the country. Now, the state is equipped to provide high-speed internet via optic fibre in all gramapanchayats. The state also has the distinction of issuing over one crore e-certificates, said IT Mission official Abhilash C S. "More than 3.29 crore Aadhaar enrolments have been made so far, with nearly 100% compliance to civil registrations on time," he said.

Establishment of two state-of-the art government data centres and over 9,000 ATMs, creation of over 20 lakh bank accounts as part of Prime Minister's Jan Dhan Yojana, high mobile penetration (close 32 million connections), high internet penetration and state wide area network (KSWAN) connecting over 3,000 government offices have made Kerala become the first complete digital state.

Source- TOI