Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday inaugurated the optical fibre internet services in eastern India’s Bihar state. The project, called “Ghar Tak Fibre”, will digitally tie together 45,945 villages located in the state with high-speed internet connectivity.
The project is aimed at improving e-Education, e-Agriculture, Tele-Medicine, Tele-law and other social security schemes in Bihar, which has the lowest per capita income in the country.
As of 2020, over 54.29 percent of India’s population has internet access. Sharing details about the fibre project in Bihar, PM Modi tweeted that this move will make the internet accessible to more and more rural households in the area.
In a bid to further help residents and business-owners in Bihar connect better with neighbouring states like Uttar Pradesh and Jharkhand, PM Modi also laid down the foundation stone of nine highway projects estimated to be worth $1.9 billion (INR 142,580,000) in Bihar via video-conferencing.
These nine highway projects will cover a total road length of about 350 kilometres.
“This included 75 projects worth INR 54,700 crore ($7.4 billion approx.) of which 13 projects have been completed, work is undergoing at 38 and others are in DPR/Bidding/Sanction stage,” said the official blog post on PM Modi’s app about the Bihar-focused projects.
This announcement comes as state assembly elections loom, which are slated for October-November and maybe held on schedule despite the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak.