The government will link each of the 2.5 lakh gram panchayats of India through optical-fibre network.

Under 'Sansad Adarsh Gram Yojna', villages adopted by the members of parliament will be provided free Wi-Fi services across India by the government, Minister of State for communications Manoj Sinha in Lok Sabha told MP Virender Kashyap on Wednesday.

Mr Sinha said the government has proposed to set up 25,000 Wi-Fi hotspots at existing rural exchanges of BSNL through comprehensive telecom development plan and in future, all other agencies/private telecom operators will be engaged to provide Wi-Fi services to every panchayat across India.

He told that the government has targeted to link each of the 2.5 lakh gram panchayats of India through optical-fibre network under Bharat Net Project .

According to Mr Sinha, one lakh gram panchayats have been connected under Digital India programme in phase one upto December 2017 and an additional 1.5 lakh panchayats will be connected with high-speed internet by March 2019.

He said that 1,13,091 gram panchayats have been connected with high-speed internet by July 15.

The department has executed a project for providing mobile services in the identified location in ten states affected by left-wing extremism, he informed Mr Kashyap.

Under this project, 2,355 locations in left-wing extremism area were taken up for installation of towers in phase one and told that as of now a total of 2,335 mobiles towers are radiating in these areas.

He said that a total of 4,072 towers will be installed in the second phase of the project, which has been approved by the government on May 23.

Mr Kashyap demanded the minister to expedite the Bharat Net project services in hilly areas, especially in Himachal Pradesh, where power grid has been given this task of connecting broadband services which are going at a very slow pace.

He demanded that power grid may be asked to work expeditiously to provide these services by March 2019.

The minister assured him that the government will take positive steps for the completion of the project in hilly areas in a time-bound manner.