Manoj Sinha meets ITU General Secretary, supports international telecom union opening an India office

NEW DELHI: Communications minister Manoj Sinha met Houlin Zhao, Secretary General of International Telecommunications Union (ITU), to enhance bilateral cooperation and support ITU to open a local area office in India.

Sinha has welcomed ITU’s proposals and asked it to address misuse of information and communications technology by terrorists and tackle cybercrimes through darknet and darkwebs. Also, ITU is keen on understanding India’s flagship programmes such as Aadhar and digital financial services so as to put it as global standards. ICT is key to promoting inclusive development in India, Sinha said, at the World Summit on Information Society Forum-2017 in Geneva.

In India, ICT has been utilised as a key enabler of governance, based on principles of Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas, he said. Sinha also spoke of Bharat Net project which would provide broadband connectivity to over 250 thousand Gram Panchayats through Gigabyte passive optical network by the end of year 2018.

In his address, he also brought up the success stories of Aadhar, BHIM, National Digital Literacy Mission and of digital platforms.

Manoj Sinha is heading a delegation for the meeting of the World Summit on Information Society Forum-2017 (WSIS) being held at Geneva.