IT minister Dayanidhi Maran with Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia in New Delhi on Monday. (PTI)

New Delhi, April 25: All personal computers will have to be sold with Indian language software from October.

In a move to take information technology to the masses, the government will ask computer manufacturers like HCL and Dell to compulsorily load free Indian language software in all the PCs they sell.

The department of information technology in association with the Center for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) will release software in the next six months to ease the use of computers in 22 Indian languages. It is already available in Tamil and the Hindi software will be released soon.

?The original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) will be asked to load the Indian languages free of cost when they sell the PCs. We will provide them with the free CD of the software if they require,? Union IT minister Dayanidhi Maran today said.

?The need of the hour is take IT to rural India. To take it to the masses, to bridge the language barrier, access to ICT infrastructure in Indian language is crucial. All Indian languages will be covered within the next six months after which the OEMs will be asked to load before selling to the customers,? said Maran.

The Indian language software will have fonts, e-mail client in local language, a spell check programme, dictionary, language type tutor.

?Last week, we launched a software in Tamil. All Indian languages are expected to be covered in the next year. Our target is to release more than one new language software every month,? said Maran.

Inaugurating the annual electronic and information technology exhibition (Elitex) and seminar, Maran pointed to the need to amend the Information Technology Act 2000 in order to keep up with the rapidly evolving information communication technology sector.

Maran released seven products at the Elitex, including a software to help thwart attacks on strategic security installations similar to the attack on Parliament and a special software that will highlight the confidential part if a print out is photocopied by an unauthorised person.

He also stressed the need to give impetus to the development of ICT manpower, which will be a key factor driving the Indian IT and IT enabled service industry.

?The Indian IT and ITES sector has to work closely with the academic community to redefine and re-orient existing curriculum and make it more industry relevant, if we have to build a surplus of IT and ITeS human resources,? said Maran.

The Elitex has delegates from 18 countries, including the US, the UK, Japan, China, Thailand, Pakistan, Spain, Egypt and Israel.

Delivering his keynote address, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, deputy-chairman of the Planning Commission, said the department of communications and information technology have exceeded the targets during the first three years of the current Five-Year Plan.

The commission is focusing on an e-governance action plan as it can reduce transaction costs, introduce transparency and reduce time lag.

As part of a national e-governance programme, 25 mission mode projects are in the process of being launched. The commission has taken up the project of digital mapping of major urban cities.