Bhubaneswar: The State Government has sent a proposal to the NITI Aayog saying that as Odisha is a connectivity deficit State with overall tele-density of about 83 per cent and rural tele-density of about 50 per cent, it needs an urgent improvement.
Chief Secretary Aditya Prasad Padhi has written to NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant in this regard, said official sources.
About 11,200 villages in Odisha do not have mobile coverage out of 51,313 villages. Availability of high speed broadband in all Gram Panchayats is very slow and lags behind in comparison to other States.
Even after mobile towers have been set up in the Left Wing Extremist (LWE) areas, the bandwidth is very low due to some technical reasons, which must be addressed immediately.
Bharat Net Project is not proceeding at the desired pace. Only 44 Gram Panchayats have been connected in Bharat Net Phase-I out of the target of 3,860 Gram Panchayats.
Similarly, lack of brick and mortar bank branches and dat a connectivity impede digital payment and financial inclusion, pointed out Padhi.
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