Speaking at the first meeting of the Centre and States to deliberate on various initiatives under the Digital India programme, Garg said in the first three years the government will provide mobile connectivity to half of these villages.
"It is very important to provide mobile connectivity in all the villages. We will connect up to 55,000 villages, which do not have such a service in the next 5 years and Rs 20,000 crore has been earmarked for this," he said.
In 2012, Minister of State for Communications and IT Milind Deora had told Rajya Sabha that about 57,271 villages in the country are yet to be connected with mobile services, as per the survey carried out by TERM cells of the Department of Telecommunications.
"We will connect half of these villages in the next 3 years and the remaining in two years. For this purpose the country has been divided into 5 areas and survey of villages is being done to build towers," he said.
The amount of Rs 20,000 crore will come through the Universal Services Obligation Fund (USOF), Garg added.
Under the Digital India programme, the government will initially spend Rs 69,524 crore on various IT and telecom projects. It has identified broadband and mobile networks as the key growth pillars under Digital India.