PATNA: Bihar will introduce its new information technology policy rechristened as Information Communication Technology (ICT) Policy, 2011, and the information technology has been given the status of industry. This was decided on Saturday at a meeting of the IT department chaired by chief minister Nitish Kumar.
IT department principal secretary Arun Kumar gave a presentation on the new IT policy saying consultations have been made with the different departments, representatives of IT and business sector as well as educational institutions and their suggestions have been incorporated in the new policy. The CM suggested that the new policy be known as ICT Policy, 2011.
The official said that there will be four components of the policy — for citizens, for education, for governance and for industries. The CM said that the policy for education be linked with computer education in high schools and review of the standard of computer education in the schools. This policy will be introduced in schools phase-wise and computer education be made available to physically handicapped people on priority basis.
Stressing on the transparency in the policy, Nitish said that in allocation of land, capital subsidy, electric subsidy, stamp duty and electricity duty, transparent policies should be framed. In the backdrop of power problem, he said, capital subsidy be provided to IT industries for purchasing generator sets. He also ordered that special subsidy be given to employment generating IT units. The government is considering to give employment assistance subsidy to such units. The CM said that open source and open standard be included in the ICT policy.
Besides the CM, deputy CM Sushil Kumar Modi, chief secretary Anup Mukherjee, industrial development commissioner C K Mishra, planning and development principal secretary Vijoy Prakash, commercial taxes secretary Rajeet Punhani, CM s secretaries Chanchal Kumar, S Siddharth and Atish Chandra, BSEB chairman P K Rai and Beltron technical secretary P C Choudhary were present at the meeting.