New Delhi: Soon after taking the charge of Union Minister for Telecommunications, IT & Electronics and Law & Justice on Monday, Ravi Shankar Prasad sent a strong message to social media firms asking them to maintain constitutional sanctity and guard against misuse of their platforms for acts of terrorism and communalism.
The Union Minister also said that India will hold spectrum auction for 5G and other bands in the current calendar year. The revival of loss-making BSNL and MTNL are also on the cards for the Union Minister.
"While we all respect freedom of speech and expression that is sacrosanct for us and part of the constitutional guarantee, but that is also subject to reasonable restriction," Prasad said after taking the charge of new IT Minister on Monday.
The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) will auction airwaves in 5G and other bands in the current calendar year, Prasad said, adding, "Trials for 5G technology will begin in 100 days. It shall be our endeavour that 5G is used for deprived sectors and social causes as well."
While spelling out his priorities, Prasad said that his main concern will be fast-tracking establishment of 5 lakh WiFi hotspots, 5 lakh digital villages, starting the field trial of 5G services in the next 100 days, the revival of state-owned MTNL and BSNL and promoting telecom manufacturing, etc.
The minister, however, asserted that the telecom corporations will have to respond with professionalism and cooperation. Expediting domestic manufacturing of telecom equipment and creating a Broadband Readiness Index to rank states will be other focus areas for the DoT.
Commenting on the sinking PSUs of the department, the minister said, "We will take steps for the revival of BSNLand MTNL as the government believes that in order to maintain sober equilibrium in the industry, the public sector must be present and it is in the nation's interest that they remain healthy. However, BSNL and MTNL also need to become professional and adopt a competitive attitude."
The Union Minister also stressed that work towards establishing a National Data Grid will a top priority as it would establish the bedrock for localising all data related to Indian citizens.
The minister listed passage of the Personal Data Protection Bill, fostering start-ups, manufacturing of medical equipment, social media/intermediary guidelines and giving the next push to the ambitious Digital India Programme as among the top priorities of the NDA government. "Also digital literacy is another crucial milestone for our government, we touched 2.21 crore figure in our first term and this needs to go up multiple folds in the next five years," Prasad said, adding that revival of India Post would also his topmost agenda.
"During the first tenure, I had taken some key initiatives to promote India Post's e-commerce business that had yielded better results. Some more concrete moves needed to be done by India Post to make most of the business opportunities and it's possible by improving the services," the minister said.
The decision to auction airwaves soon is of significance as the sale proceeds are a major source of revenue for the exchequer. There was no auction in financial years 2017-18 and 2018-19. The government had in 2016-17 raised Rs 65,789 crore, a fraction of the Rs 5.63 trillion worth of spectrum it had put up for sale.