Nitish Kumar makes a point during a chat with former BJP president Rajnath Singh at the janata darbar on Monday. Rajnath described the Bihar chief minister as the “best” and “peerless”. (PTI photo) n See Page 6

Patna, Jan. 10: The Nitish Kumar government is ready with its draft policy on information technology, the sector it believes would propel overall growth in Bihar in the years to come.

Under the draft policy (a copy of which is with The Telegraph), the government will create a venture fund with a corpus of around Rs 100 crore to encourage entrepreneurs to set up their units in the state.

The government is trying to aggressively promote IT in Bihar, which is lagging behind other states in this crucial sector. Bihar’s IT prospects had taken a beating in the early 2000s when Lalu Prasad had famously run down the sector, saying “IT-YT kya hota hai?” IT firms looking at the east gave the state a miss and opted to set up shop in Bengal and Orissa.

The Nitish government is now trying to fast-track progress in the sector. The draft policy envisages setting up of IT parks to promote IT and IT enabled service (ITeS) companies.

The draft has proposed a clutch of concessions ranging from rebate on stamp duty and electricity duty to exemption from land and building tax to those commercial buildings dedicated to house software/IT industries to attract investment.

Incentives apart, the draft policy also talks of the pro-active role that the government would play.

Some of the facilities which the government would provide would be in the form of power supply, security, relaxations in regulations and tax benefits.

Keeping the present position of power generation in mind, the draft policy says the state would promote captive power generation units established by IT/ITeS companies.

Realising the need for proper infrastructure, the draft policy says the government will promote a public-private-partnership (PPP) model in setting up IT infrastructure and private players would be provided freedom and facilitation.

The draft policy also addresses the employment aspect and says the government would provide special incentives to companies that would employ local youths. The policy also talks of promoting computer education at all levels commencing from school.

The draft policy also lays stress on e-governance.

The policy talks of appointing a chief information and technology officer in every department who would head the computerisation of their respective units.

Bihar achieved several things as far as effective use of IT is concerned and setting up of Bihar State Wide Area Network (BSWAN) for ensuring vertical connectivity of state headquarters with districts and blocks is an example of this achievement, said a highly placed source in the IT department.

“Given the progress made in the last five years it was a logical step to formulate a comprehensive policy for IT sector,” he added.

The source said in order to finetune the draft policy, the IT department has convened a meeting of stakeholders on Tuesday in which IT department principal secretary Arun Kumar Singh would make a presentation of the policy and then suggestions would be solicited from the participants.