Free WiFi to all villages connected via Bharat Net till March 2020: Ravi Shankar Prasad
Rewari (Haryana), Dec 25: WiFi services being provided through BharatNet in villages across India will be free of charge till March 2020, Telecom and Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said on Wednesday.
"We have already connected 1.3 lakh gram panchayats through BharatNet optical fibre network... Our target is to take this to 2.5 lakh gram panchayats. To promote utilisation of BharatNet services, we will provide WiFi free in all villages connected through BharatNet till March 2020," the minister said.
Currently, 48,000 villages connected under the BharatNet project have WiFi access.
The minister said all common service centres (CSCs) will offer banking services. As such, CSCs act as access points for delivery of digital services and the number of these centres has increased from about 60,000 in 2014 to 3.60 lakh currently. Haryana itself has 11,000 CSCs offering an array of 650 services.
CSC e-Governance Services India Ltd is implementing the Digital Village initiative in rural and remote areas of the country. Overall, one lakh villages are set to be transformed into digital villages.
Gurawara village in the Rewari district of Haryana has been developed as a digital village by CSC. The CSC unit there, operated by village level entrepreneur Sonu Bala, facilitates access to government-to-citizen services through the digital seva portal.
CSC e-Governance Services India Ltd CEO Dinesh Tyagi said, "The Digital Village scheme has the potential to truly transform the village economy and reduce the digital divide."
A DigiGaon or digital village was conceptualised as a connected village where citizens can avail various e-services of the central government, state governments and private players.
These villages are projected to be change agents, promoting rural entrepreneurship and building rural capacities and livelihoods through community participation and collective action.
The scheme focuses on empowering the entire village community by providing access to education, health or financial services through the digital medium.
In a digital village, residents are encouraged to become digitally literate. Residents can avail quality healthcare through tele-medicine consultations under allopathy, homeopathy and ayurvedic systems.
The digital village also promotes a financially inclusive society by providing banking, insurance and pension services at the doorstep of citizens. In addition, the entire village is WiFi enabled, so residents are digitally connected.
Such villages are also equipped with an LED assembly unit, a sanitary napkin unit, a paper bag-making unit and a rural BPO to promote employment among the youth.
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SC to hear pleas for reviewing wages of priests, temple staff
New Delhi (PTI): The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear on Monday a plea to constitute a judicial commission or an expert committee to review the wages and other benefits given to priests, 'sevadars' and temple staff in state-controlled temples.
A bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta is likely to hear the PIL filed by advocate Ashwini Upadhyay.
The plea, filed through advocate Ashwani Dubey, seeks directions to the Centre and states to constitute a judicial commission or an expert committee to review the remuneration and other benefits given to the priests and temple staff in state-controlled temples.
"Petitioner also seeks a declaration that priests and temple staff are employee' under Section 2(k) of the Code on Wages, 2019. Petitioner submits that once the State assumes the administrative, economic and financial control over temples, an employer-employee relationship arises and denial of dignified wages to priests and temple staff violates the right to livelihood guaranteed under Article 21," it said.
Upadhyay said the cause of action accrued on April 4, when he went to Varanasi to attend a public programme and after performing 'Rudrabhishek' in the Kashi Vishwanath temple, which is controlled by the state, he came to know that even the minimum wages to live with dignity are not given to the priests and temple staff.
"Recently, in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, priests and temple staff organised a large-scale protest demanding the minimum wages. Priests and temple staff are not getting even the minimum wage prescribed by the State for unskilled and semi-skilled workers. This is a systemic exploitation. State is acting as a model employer through the endowments department, but violating the minimum wages Act and the directive principles of state policy (Article 43)," it said.
The plea further said the continued refusal to meet the minimum wages with the 2026 inflation-adjusted cost of living index has forced the petitioner to seek judicial intervention to prevent the further marginalisation of priests and temple staff.
Upadhyay further said the precarious nature of livelihood was starkly exposed on February 7, 2025, when a Tamil Nadu department issued a circular at the 'Dandayuthapani Swami Temple' in Madurai, strictly prohibiting priests from accepting 'dakshina' in 'aarti plates'.
"It is necessary to state that priests in such temples often receive no formal salary from the State and rely entirely on 'Dakshina'; the State's administrative order directly threatened them with starvation. Although withdrawn due to public outrage, the incident highlights the State's arbitrary power over the survival of the priests. This is also a bitter truth that States are controlling lakhs of temples but not a single mosque or church," the PIL claimed.
The petition, alternatively, sought direction to the Centre and states to take appropriate steps for the welfare of priests, sevadars and other temple staff in the spirit of the Allahabad High Court's earlier judgments.
