Nokia to develop 500 smart villages in India
New Delhi, May 16: In line with the government's Digital India programme, Nokia on Wednesday launched a "Smartpur" digital village project with the aim of developing 500 digitally integrated villages across the country in five years.
"India is on the brink of a phenomenal digital journey which can only be successful if it is all inclusive," said Ambassador of Finland to India Nina Vaskunlahti after inaugurating a pilot of the project in Tain village of Nuh district in Haryana.
"Smartpur project is a significant step in that direction which will integrate these villages and rural communities, providing digital tools and Internet connectivity for social and economic impact that truly makes a village smart and fosters a digitally inclusive society," she added.
With the Smartpur project, Nokia said it aims to create a sustainable ecosystem in villages where community members can leverage digital tools to bring efficiency in daily lives, transparency in governance, economic prosperity for households and ease of access to various government services and information.
The project will work under the five key areas of development - health, education, livelihood, governance and finance - to build a holistic, digitally integrated village, the Finnish telecom gear maker said.
"The Smartpur initiative is our contribution to delivering the benefits of broadband infrastructure and services to the 'telecom-dark' areas and support the government's vision of Digital India for a more inclusive growth," said Sanjay Malik, head of India for Nokia.
According to the International Telecom Union ICT (information and communications technology) Facts and Figures, 20 per cent of households in developed countries and as many as 66 per cent of households in developing countries do not have Internet access, leaving almost four billion people from developing countries offline.
Nearly a billion of these unconnected people live in India, mostly in rural India.
"At Nokia, we believe connecting the unconnected opens up opportunities in many areas and has tremendous potential to enable socio-economic empowerment of individual as well as communities," Malik said.
In the first phase of the project, 20 villages will be digitally integrated in Haryana and Tamil Nadu in a "hub and spoke" model.
Tain village in Nuh district of Haryana and Asoor in Kanchipuram district, Tamil Nadu, will serve as hub which will host a digital centre with telecom connectivity to provide ICT-enabled, primary services.
The spoke centres will further extend these services to nine other villages from each hub, Nokia said.
In the second phase, the project will be scaled-up to up to another 80 villages across various states and subsequently, it will be extended to another 400 villages over a period of five years, it added.
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New Delhi (PTI): The Supreme Court on Friday granted bail to filmmaker Vikram Bhatt's wife Shwetambari Bhatt in a multi-crore rupees cheating case.
The top court also sought responses of Rajasthan Police and complainant Ajay Murdia, founder of Indira IVF and Fertility Centre and a resident of Udaipur, by February 18 and said it may consider a day after the bail plea of filmmaker Vikram Bhatt.
Murdia alleged in his complaint that Bhatt and his wife induced him to invest over Rs 30 crore in a biopic of his late wife, promising high returns.
A bench comprising Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi took note of the submissions of senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi, appearing for the Bhatts, and ordered forthwith release of Shwetambari Bhatt from Udaipur jail.
The bench asked the Chief Judicial Magistrate of Udaipur to pass the bail order delineating the terms and conditions for her release.
The top court also issued notices to complainant Ajay Murdia, the founder of Indira IVF and Fertility Centre and a resident of Udaipur, and the Rajasthan government for February 19.
Rohatgi said the director and his wife and others have been put behind bars.
"It is not so simple... Rs 30 crore fraud," the counsel for the state government said.
"But, you cannot use these cases to recover money," the bench said, adding that the complainant be also made a party to the petition.
"Unfortunately, they (petitioners) have not sought quashing of the FIR… How Rajasthan has been chosen? Very unfortunate," the bench said.
On January 31, the Rajasthan High Court rejected their bail applications in the cheating case.
The two have been in jail since December 7, 2025, when they were arrested in Mumbai and brought to Udaipur.
While rejecting their bail, the high court observed that granting bail to the accused at this stage would not be appropriate.
Vikram Bhatt was arrested after Murdia filed a complaint of cheating and criminal breach of trust against the filmmaker, his wife Shwetambari Bhatt and others, alleging that funds taken in the name of a film project were misappropriated.
The complaint has alleged that funds to the tune of Rs 30 crore were misappropriated. The complaint alleged that the Bhatts prepared fake bills under various names and got money transferred from the complainant.
The money was supposed to be for making films for the complainant, but was allegedly deposited into the accused's own accounts and used by them.
Apart from Vikram and his wife, Udaipur-based Dinesh Kataria and Bhatt's manager, Mehboob Ansari, were also arrested by Rajasthan Police on December 7, 2025.
