The central government wants Odisha to be the hub of electronic manufacturing said Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad while inaugurating the biggest STPI and Data Centre of Eastern India here on Saturday.

STPI will bring Digital inclusion by way of start-up revolution and large-scale e-transaction through JAM (Jan Dhan, Aadhaar, Mobile). In view of the controversy over leakage of Aadhaar numbers, Minister Prasad asserted that divulging Aadhaar does not mean that one’s secrecy or finger print data is leaked out.

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It has been indigenously encrypted no one can have access to the personal data of a citizen and three crore data authentication is being done every day.

He said, India has around 130 crore population and 120 crore mobile phones. Out of them, 45 crore are smart phone users. Fifty five crore internet connections were provided so far. One lakh villages have been connected with broadband internet.

The Minister said, When the NDA government came to power, the optical fibre connection was to the tune of only 358 KMs which was spread during 2011to 2014.

However, during the last four years, the optical fibre connectivity reached to 2.72 lakh KMs. The Minister said, through JAM and DBT, the government has disbursed Rs. 4 lakh crore subsidy benefit to the common men by saving Rs 90,000 crores by blocking the leakages.

Mr Prasad said, “Around 121 centres are operating BPOs in the country. In Odisha, 13 in principle approval were given to companies to start BPOs in Bhubaneswar. More BPO centres will come up in Angul, Jajpur, Sambalpur and Jeypore (Koraput) which were approved,” he informed.

Union Petroleum, Natural Gas, Skill Development and Entrepreneurship Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said, Data Mining and Repository are highly needed for oil and hydrocarbon exploration as well as production. Data Repository will also help research in hydrocarbon sector.

The Minister said, Rs. 3.5 crore incentives is provided to start-ups in the innovation and incubation fields. There has been a stupendous growth in exports by STP units from Rs.52 crores in 1992-93 to more than 3,50,680 crores in the year 2016-17.

STPI has also been instrumental in promoting IT exports from the state of Odisha, Union Minister said adding the STPI-Bhubaneswar is instrumental in attracting blue-chip IT companies to State which will lead in IT exports growth of around Rs 3,800 crores.

Odisha Science and Technology Minister, Badrinarayan Patra, Dr Omkar Rai, Director General, STPI, Devesh Tyagi, Senior Director, STPI and Manas Panda, Director, STPI Bhubaneswar were among the dignitaries present during the occasion.