Ramanathapuram
Illamthorum Inayam, the State government’s ambitious project announced by former Chief Minister Jayalalithaa to provide internet connectivity to households could not take off as the Centre delayed financial support of ₹ 3,500 crore for laying underground optical fibre cable, Minister for Information Technology M. Manikandan has said.
Addressing the pre-Global Investors Meet (GIM) meeting here on Saturday, he said the Centre was delaying the financial support despite several representations. The Centre which initially questioned the reason for opting underground cable, instead of overhead cable, had agreed to sanction the amount after the state government explained the reasons and presented a detailed project report but the funds have not come, he said.
He said the government had established Tamil Nadu FibreNet Corporation, a special purpose vehicle for implementing the project to provide internet connectivity to households in 12,524 village panchayats after connecting blocks to the village panchayatas but it suffered delay for want financial support from the Centre.
“The government had already established connectivity between district headquarters and blocks and if we connect the blocks with village panchayats we can do wonders but the Centre failed to cooperate,” the Minister said. The Centre had also promised to sanction ₹ 20 crore for establishing smart classrooms in 39 villages in the district in a pilot project under ‘Digigram’ project but failed to release the funds, the Minister said.
Now the government has decided to launch the ‘Illamthorum Inayam’ project with State’s funds in the coastal districts, which were prone to natural calamities in the first phase and get the Centre’s fund at a later stage, he said.
“As the Lok Sabha elections are round the corner, we are confident of getting the funds,” he said. In the next phase, the government proposed to provide Internet protocol television service and triple connectivity, he said.
