Cabinet approves extending Digital India prog with Rs 14,903 Cr outlay

STATE TIMES NEWS

New Delhi: Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved extension of the Digital India programme with an outlay of Rs 14,903 crore to boost digital initiatives in skilling, cyber security, high performance computing and simplifying technology for masses, among other areas.
Briefing the media after the Cabinet meeting, Union minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said the outlay has been approved for a five-year period between 2021-22 to 2025-26.
The extended Digital India programme will add on to the work done under the previous version of the scheme.
“The budget was allocated from time to time as per requirement. We have made changes in the schemes for which approval was required,” Vaishnaw said, adding the Cabinet meeting, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, approved the extension of the programme with the outlay of Rs 14,903 crore.
Under the extended programme, nine more super computers will be added under the National Supercomputing Mission(NCM).
The minister said that 18 super computers have been deployed under NCM.
In March 2015, the government approved installation of 70 supercomputers under NCM by 2022 with an outlay of Rs 4,500 crore.
The minister said the approval for nine supercomputers have come in addition to the earlier approved project.
Vaishnaw said the Digilocker app will be extended to micro, small and medium enterprises to help them avail credit and other services by verifying their document stores in the app.