The Ministry of Human Resource Development is planning a new programme called Campus Connect. Under these programme 21,000 colleges, 20 classrooms will be made Wi-Fi enabled. Totally, 4.2 lakh classrooms will be made Wi-Fi enabled and this will help around 1.5 crore students. Students will be given access only to those websites which are academically relevant.

All the buildings of 600 universities that have 1 Gbps bandwidth will be made by Wi-Fi enabled. This includes Government of India funded institutions, state government universities and also private universities. This will help around 20 lakh students. The whole campus of all the 140 centrally funded Institutions of Ministry of HRD will be made Wi-Fi enabled.

The National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology (NMEICT) aims to leverage the potential of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in teaching and learning process. The Mission also aims to provide 20 Broadband connections of 512 Kbps speed to over 25,000 colleges and 2000 polytechnics and optical fiber connectivity one Gbps to 419 universities/ university level institutions in the country which includes internet facility.

The NMEICT scheme has three major components viz. (i) content generation; (ii) providing connectivity to universities and colleges; and (iii) Research and development of low cost access device.

Under the NMEICT scheme, the activity of providing connectivity to 419 Universities / University level Institutions and all colleges including polytechnics is in progress. So far connectivity to 403 Universities/ University level institutions and 21,026 colleges in the country has been provided. Under this scheme, no central assistance has been provided by the Central Government directly to States to implement the scheme/ project. However, as provided in the Mission document, funds have been released to universities/university level institutions of the country for various projects.

For connectivity to universities and colleges, central share of 75% of the cost is directly released to the BSNL/ MTNL (implementing agency) with the stipulation that the balance 25% of the cost (10% in case of institution of North East Region) would be deposited by the concerned institution directly to BSNL/ MTNL.

The details of the fund allocated and utilized under NMEICT scheme during last three years and the current year is as follows:

This information was given by the Union Human Resource Development Minister, Smt. Smriti Irani to a Lok Sabha question.

Source: PIB