PM urges states to set up mobile towers in all uncovered villages within this fiscal

New Delhi, October 25:  Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday directed states to ensure setting up of mobile towers in all uncovered villages within this financial year with regular meetings with all stakeholders.

This will ensure saturation of mobile coverage in the remotest of the areas, he said while chairing the PRAGATI meeting.

Modi was reviewing the mobile towers and 4G coverage under USOF projects.

Under the universal service obligation fund (USOF), 33,573 villages with 24,149 mobile towers are to be covered for saturation of mobile connectivity.

PRAGATI is the ICT-based multi-modal platform for pro-active governance and timely implementation, involving Centre and state governments.

The Prime Minister emphasised that PM Gati Shakti National Master Plan Portal in conjunction with technologies such as satellite imagery can help address various issues of implementation and planning relating to location and land requirements for projects.

He also instructed that all the stakeholders executing projects in high population-density urban areas may appoint nodal officers and form teams for better coordination.

For irrigation projects, Modi advised that visits of stakeholders be organised where successful rehabilitation and reconstruction work has been done. The transformational impact of such projects may also be shown, he said.

This may motivate the stakeholders for the early execution of projects, he noted.

In the meeting, a total of eight projects were reviewed. Among these, four projects were concerned with water supply and irrigation, two projects for expanding national highways and connectivity, and two projects for rail and metro rail connectivity.

These projects have a cumulative cost of around Rs 31,000 crore and relate to seven states, namely Bihar, Jharkhand, Haryana, Odisha, West Bengal, Gujarat, and Maharashtra.