NEC organises summit on IT development for NE states

Agartala,Jul 30 (UNI) In a bid to promote Information Technology(IT) and Telecommunications in the Northeast, North Eastern Council(NEC) will organise a two-day IT summit in Kohima tomorrow with all the eight states of the region.

The state's IT department officials here today said the Ministry of Development of Northeastern Region (DoNER) had initiated the brainstorming conference on IT for the first time in the region.

''How all the major stakeholders can converge here to invest in these sectors and how this would accelerate the development of the region will be discussed in the summit,'' said state IT minister Tapan Chakraborty.

He added, ''We have very high expectations since we will get to know the scope of various proposals we had submitted to NEC and on our part, we shall showcase the progress we had made in disseminating information technology in the state.'' National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) and its member companies and senior government officials of the Northeastern states were scheduled to attend the summit. Besides, DoNER Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar and Union Telecom Minister A Raja would also attend the summit.

The second day of the summit would be devoted to brainstorming on the telecommunications sector, officials said here.

The officials explained that the first major initiative in the Northeast had been taken up by setting up community information centres (CICs) in August 2002. This had been done to boost the communications network in the underdeveloped region through InfoTech.

UNI