The Union Cabinet on August 16 approved the extension of the Digital India project with an outlay of Rs 14,903 crore for a period of five years starting from 2021-2022 to 2025-2026, Meity Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said.“Prime Minister Narendra Modi, at the cabinet meeting, has approved the Digital India programme with an outlay of Rs 14,903 crore,” Vaishnaw said.A lot of work has already happened in this regard. Since we were working on molding these schemes, modifying the existing schemes to make them better and relevant for today's requirements, that's why the scheme has been extended today," he said.
This comes at a time when the Digital India Programme received reduced budget when compared to the 2022-23 revised estimate. While in 2022-23, the revised estimate for Digital India stood at Rs 7,603 crore for Budget 2023-24, the estimate was lowered to Rs 4,795 crore in the last Budget.The Union minister added that the extended Digital India project will add to the work done under the previous version of the scheme. Under the project, 5.25 lakh IT professionals will be reskilled and upskilled and 2.65 lakh persons will be trained in information technology. Further, under the extended Digital India project, nine more supercomputers will be added under the National Supercomputing Mission (NCM). So far, 18 supercomputers have already been deployed under the mission.