There are some glaring faux pas on the website for Belagavi district — http://belgaum.nic.in — built by the National Informatics Centre (NIC). The NIC is the prime builder of e-government /e-governance applications and is a promoter of digital opportunities with all of the State and Union governments and Union Territories.
Many visit the website for authentic information and latest updates. Its recently updated form has been likened by many to old wine in new bottle and has plenty of errors. For instance, the ‘Accessibility’ page says that the “Belagavi Airport near Sambra has been not operational and the nearest airport is Hubballi, 100 km from city.” While fact is the Belagavi Airport has been operational since 2013 with regular flights to Bengaluru, Chennai and Mumbai. Now, anybody planning to visit Belagavi by flight and looks for information on air connectivity on the district website would be disappointed. The information on ‘Roadways’ fails to inform that the city is connected to metros like Mumbai and Bengaluru by the NH4 under the Golden Quadrangle Corridor. The ‘Industries’ page makes an oblique reference to sugarcane yet fails to mention that Belagavi is the “sugar bowl” of Karnataka, with highest number of sugar mills in the State. Further, the page on ‘Education’ has no mention of the government-established universities viz. Visvesvaraya Technological University and the Rani Channamma University. The page, while mentioning two private medical colleges, also fails to mention about the government’s Belagavi Institute of Medical Sciences. As one keeps exploring the website, there could be many such faux pas to add to what some web-savvy browsers described as a misinformation campaign, at a time when Belagavi has been selected for the Smart City project.
The section on ‘Roadways’ fails to inform that the city is connected to metros such as Mumbai and Bengaluru
