India may soon have a policy on Internet neutrality and security with the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology taking it up as one of its key priorities under the ‘Digital India’ programme.

To work out an action plan, Communications and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad will on Friday chair an inter-ministerial meeting with a panel that includes officials from the Department of Electronics & Information Technology (DeitY), Home Ministry (including Intelligence Bureau) and the Legal Department.

“The basic agenda and presentations would include Net neutrality, Internet security, governance and other structures such as domain names. Globally, there are forums such as Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), but India does not have any such body,” sources privy to the meeting told BusinessLine.

An official said the Minister would seek ideas on how India can also set up a statutory body like ICANN and IANA. Strategic objectives of the meeting would also include India’s future vision on Net security, physical infrastructure for Net governance, code of conduct and privacy issues.

“Globally, there are many forums and events that discuss the future of the Internet industry, but we don’t have such programmes because we do not have a forum. China also conducted an event in November at Wuzhen town to discuss and understand the Internet world better,” the official said.

Another official said there had been lot of queries from international communities on what kind of policies India has in terms of Net neutrality and governance.

Since the past few months, the Minister has been meeting a lot of global leaders from the IT world in the US and Europe, and they have been asking about these issues. Therefore, the Minister wants to study all the aspects, said the official.

According to the Internet and Mobile Association of India and IMRB International, there are around 300 million Net users in India and the number is estimated to grow to 354 million by June this year.

Speaking at the India Digital Summit here on Wednesday, Prasad also said that the Internet economy was expected to touch $200 billion by 2020, and would contribute 5 per cent to GDP.