People from the IT sector at the meet in Patna on Tuesday. Picture by Deepak Kumar

Patna, Jan. 11: Having formulated the draft policy for the information technology (IT) sector, the Bihar government has now set the ball rolling for fine-tuning it.

The IT department today invited various stakeholders to an interactive session for their views.

Addressing the participants, IT minister Shahid Ali Khan said his department intended to have such a policy document, which could work as role model for others.

“We intend to have the final policy document at the earliest so that it could be put up for cabinet approval in the next month,” said the minister.

A wide range of suggestions poured in as soon as the IT department principal secretary Arun Kumar Singh completed his presentation, briefing the participants about the highlights of the policy.

H.C. Pandey, a renowned academic and former vice-chancellor of Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra, opened the barrage of ideas. He underlined the need of having some kind of central facility for advanced computation. He suggested the government to take initiative for having such a facility by tapping the opportunities, as some big companies are willing to set up such facility in India.

President of Bihar Industries Association (BIA) S.P. Sinha praised the policy document for being comprehensive in nature, but at the same time he also suggested that efforts should be made for encouraging big players of IT sector to set up shops in the state.

The BIA president said the presence of a big player in the state would attract other IT players towards Bihar.

President of the Bihar chapter of The Indus Entrepreneur Prabhat Sinha said the policy document was very comprehensive yet it needed to be simplified. Instead of talking in terms of reimbursing the concessions proposed to be given to the prospective investors in the IT sector, the policy should have provisions which could ensure exemption right at the entry level.

BSNL senior general manager H.S. Dwivedi informed the participants about the initiatives taken for providing hassle-free connectivity to anyone willing to invest in the IT sector in the state.

Thanking the participants for putting forward their suggestions, the IT department principal secretary said the copy of the draft IT policy had been posted on the official website of the Bihar government (gov.bih.nic.in).