All villages to have telephones by November

New Delhi, July 13 (UNI) The Bharat Nirman target of providing every village with telephone connectivity is likely to be achieved by November 2007-- about two years ahead of schedule.

0f the 66,822 villages, 48,125 were covered till May 2007 and the remaining will be covered by November this year, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was told yesterday when he chaired a meeting to review the progress of two components of the Bharat Nirman programme-- Rural Telephony and Rural Roads.

When completed, 14,183 villages will be connected through satellite technology, and the rest through other technologies.

To increase rural teledensity, about 80,000 towers will be installed by May 2008 to facilitate mobile and other wireless services in rural areas.

Efforts are also on to provide Broadband services to cover 200,000 villages in 5000 blocks across the country.

The final goal is to create 50 million rural connections by 2007, increase this to 80 million connections by 2010 and provide broadband connections in every village by 2012.

On the performance of the rural roads, the Prime Minister was told that nearly 40,000 Km of new link roads had been built and 50,000 Km of existing rural roads upgaraded in the first two years (2005-2007) of Bharat Nirman.

Against the target of connecting 66,802 villages with all weather roads, 13,831 villages have been connected.

It was noted that 90 per cent habitation connectivity had been achieved in nine states-- Asom, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Rajasthan , Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal.

Among these, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh were on course, while Jharkhand, Bihar, Orissa, Asom, and West Bengal were to gain momentum.

''The Prime Minister has written to the Chief Ministers of all the states to ensure that the Bharat Nirman targets are met and they have assured action,'' a statement by the Prime Minister's Office said here today.

UNI