Digital Seva Setu By Gujarat Government – Burning Issues

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What has happened?

Gujarat government launched phase-I of the ‘Digital Seva Setu’ programme,
Under which 3,500 village panchayats have been connected with 100 MBPS optical fibre network,
To facilitate online availability of public welfare services.

All the 14,000 gram panchayats in the state will be covered under the programme.
It aims to provide fast and faceless services to people by removing corruption or the need of middlemen.
It is meant to ensure optimum utilisation of technology for public welfare and will bring in a “historic administrative revolution”.
Public welfare services will be made available at the e-gram office in each panchayat and villagers will not have to go all the way to taluka or district-level offices.
Gram panchayats will be connected to the state data centre at Gandhinagar.
The work connecting 3,500 village panchayats (through optical fibre network) has been completed.
By December this year, 8,000 village panchayats will be provided with this service.
All the remaining villages will be connected by 2021.

In starting 20 services will be provided, and will slowly offer 50 services to villages.

A ‘talati’ (revenue officer) will be providing affidavits at the village level.
The beneficiaries will not have to visit the notary offices which are situated in their nearby cities.
The beneficiaries will also be able to use electronic signatures instead of physical signatures.
The documents which will provide to the beneficiaries will be given in a digital locker instead in a physical form.
The customers will be able to get hold of their documents by their mobile phones

It is central Government’s most ambitious rural internet connectivity programme.
BharatNet Project is the world’s largest rural broadband connectivity programme using Optical fiber.
It is implemented by Bharat Broadband Network Limited (BBNL) – a special purpose vehicle under the Ministry of Communications.
In October 2011, National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN) was launched.
But later renamed as Bharat Net Project in 2015.
It aims to connect all the 2,50,000 Gram panchayats in the country and provide 100 Mbps connectivity.
It will help to facilitate the delivery of e-governance, e-health, e-education, e-banking, Internet and other servicesto rural India.