The Government has set one trillion dollars as the goal for digital economy. Over the next coming years, India will emerge as one of the largest digitally connected and digitally enabled countries in the world. To help achieve this and to enhance digital adoption, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) is focusing on providing digital literacy to the citizens across the country especially in the rural areas. In line with this, the Pradhan Mantri Gramin Digital Saksharta Abhiyan (PMGDISHA) was approved by Union Cabinet in February 2017 with the approved budget outlay of Rs. 2351.38 crore, to usher in digital literacy in rural India with a target to cover 6 crore rural households (one person per household) across the country.

So far, a total of more than 6.15 crore candidates have been enrolled and 5.24 crore have been trained, out of which 3.89 crore candidates have been duly certified under the PMGDISHA Scheme. The State/UT-wise status of the PMGDISHA scheme is given at Annexure.

The PMGDISHA scheme is being implemented through CSC e-Governance Services India Limited, a Special Purpose Vehicle (CSC-SPV), incorporated under the Companies Act 1956, under the overall supervision of MeitY, with the collaboration of the State Governments and UT Administrations. To ensure that the benefits of the program flow to the rural India, a centralized Project Management Unit (PMU) has been put in place by CSC-SPV to provide the requisite infrastructure backbone, logistics, co-ordination support among various agencies and monitoring mechanisms to oversee the implementation of the Scheme right up to the Gram Panchayat level.

Under the scheme, digital literacy training to the beneficiaries is imparted through the select Common Service Centres (CSCs)/Training Centres that are operational at the Gram Panchayat Level. As per the Scheme guidelines, such training centre should have minimum of 3-5 Computers (Laptop or PC) with genuine/licensed software and minimum of one teaching faculty. So far, more than 4.13 lakh such Centres are approved under the PMGDISHA scheme.

Certification of the trained beneficiaries is carried out through online remotely proctored examination conducted by nationally recognized Certifying Agencies namely National Institute of Electronics and Information Technology (NIELIT), National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS), ICT Academy, Haryana Knowledge Corporation Limited (HKCL) and Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC).

The PMGDISHA Scheme is funded as a Central Sector Scheme, hence, funds are not sanctioned and allocated to States/UTs. The targets under the scheme are expected to be achieved within the approved duration of the scheme i.e. upto 31^st March, 2023.

Annexure

The State/UT-wise status of the PMGDISHA scheme as on date is given below:

This information was given by the Minister of State for Electronics & Information Technology, Shri Rajeev Chandrasekhar in a written reply to a question in Rajya Sabha today.

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RKJ/M