Centre mulls over data protection laws

CIRCUIT EC / Hyderabad

Information technology and communications minister Dayanidhi Maran said that the Centre was formulating laws to protect data and these would be introduced shortly. He spoke about the need for data protection laws at the inauguration of Satyam Cyber Space, a plug-n-play facility built by SDE Engineers, in Hyderabad. Expressing his views about domain names, he said he hoped to see more Indian companies registering under ‘.in’ rather than ‘.com’ and ‘.net’ domains. “I shall shortly be bringing necessary policy changes to make the ‘.in’ domain more popular in our country and the world over. The Centre regards IT as one of the top five priority segments. It is a part of the National Agenda. The new Telecom Policy has invited private participants into the Indian telecom sector. India has pro-IT policies and the Centre supports the IT industry by providing basic facilities required by technology companies,” Maran said.

Dr Y S Rajasekhara Reddy, chief minister, Andhra Pradesh said that he was not happy with the current growth rate of IT industry in Andhra Pradesh (AP). The performance of the state IT industry was down to the fifth position in the country from the third during the past five years. He gave the example of IT exports comparing AP with Karnataka. While IT exports from Andhra Pradesh were at Rs 5,025 crore, they were much higher in Karnataka at Rs 18,000 crore in fiscal 2003-04.

“In the recent past, Tamil Nadu overtook AP in IT exports. It is estimated that about 30 million sq ft of additional space is required by 2009 in AP. We have constituted three think tanks on hardware, HRD and infrastructure sectors to promote AP in a big way. International connectivity is important not only for the IT sector, but also for other verticals. Rs 600 crore of investment is required for the information highway project aimed at taking broadband to the villages. We are working on a $200 billion fund to take broadband services to rural areas and the Centre must make necessary arrangements to make an incubator facility a reality in Hyderabad,” Dr Y S R said.