Tamil Nadu to distribute 5.36 lakh laptops in 2016-17

Chennai, Sep 28: The Tamil Nadu government will supply around 5.36 lakh laptops during the 2016-17 academic year under its scheme to provide free laptops to students, state Information Technology (IT) Minister M. Manikandan said on Wednesday.

The AIADMK government, during its previous five-year term, had supplied around 32.35 lakh free laptops to the students, he said.

He was speaking at the 'Connect 2016', an annual conference and exhibition on information and communication technology (ICT), organised here by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).

On the e-governance initiatives of the state government, Manikandan said 10,486 e-seva centres are functioning in the state to enable people to use online facility for getting birth/death certificates and others.

The minister said that during a global investors meet last year, Rs 10,950 crore investments in the IT sector was attracted.

According to Kris Gopalakrishnan, one of the founders of Infosys, the Indian IT sector is growing at 10 per cent per annum and has the potential to create a large number of jobs.

He said the sector is expected to add around one lakh jobs.

Vijay K. Thadani, Vice-Chairman and Managing Director of NIIT Ltd., said digitisation is the next wave of specialisation and the education system should focus on this area.

He said many IT companies are now reskilling their workforce in digital technology.

IANS