Rs 102 cr WAN project to be set up in Haryana

Haryana is on the threshold of a communication revolution. Soon, the residents of 106 towns and 6,800 villages of Haryana will not have to travel to the Sub-Divisional Magistrate's (SDM) office to get their driving licence, vehicle registration or any other documents.

A Rs 102-crore project is under implementation in Haryana for Wide Area Network. Corporate giants like HCL, TCS, UTL, Tulip and IBM have already taken the tenders for State Wide Area Network (SWAN).

The preparation of back-end information will be outsourced to the private companies by the Haryana Electronics Development Corporation Ltd. The private partners will get a quarterly guaranteed payment.

The project is expected to be completed by December 31 of next year. Under this programme, common service centres (CSC) will be set up across the state on the public-private partnership model. There would be one service centre for six villages.

The CSCs would function as communication kiosks and all government services and transactions would be done on-line at these centres.

A senior official of Haryana government told Business Standard that local entrepreneurs would be hired for the centres on a build-own-operate-transfer basis.

The Centre will fund the 60 per cent of the project cost and the balance would be mobilised by the Haryana government.

All 20 districts of Haryana will have SWAN in the next three months. This will help the state government cut cost in many other ways.

With the help of support voice and video data, an in-house telecommunication network will be developed. Haryana is one of the late comers to foray into SWAN, but the state plans to achieve the target quickly.

With a literacy rate of 78.49 per cent (males) and 55.73 per cent (females), the state is expecting to get positive results from this communication revolution.