Advertisment

Delhi IT.com: high expectations, low visibility

author-image
CIOL Bureau
Updated On
New Update

NEW DELHI: Delhi IT.com was the first IT exhibition organized by the Government of Delhi to achieve Chief Minister Shiela Dixit’s dream of making Delhi the ‘IT capital of the country’. Organized jointly by the state government and Wisitex Foundation, the event was spread over four days between March 1-4. The event was sponsored by a host of organizations, which included the Ministry of Telecom, Ministry of IT, MTNL, TCIL, VSNL, and ITI.

Advertisment

The event comprised exhibitions, seminars, corporate presentations and an award ceremony. The highlight of the event was the unveiling of the Delhi Declaration on the last day of the event. The Declaration was prepared by a panel of prominent industrialists and was headed by Sunil Bharti Mittal of Bharti Enterprises.

While the exhibition was held in Pragati Maidan, the seminars were held in Hotel Oberoi. Dixit and the Lt Governor of Delhi, Vijay Kapoor, jointly inaugurated the exhibition at Pragati Maidan. Inaugurating the exhibition, Dixit said, "The exhibition is organized with a view to make the state of Delhi a cyber state by 2003. We are aiming at a complete paperless office by the target year through both e-governance and e-commerce." She also said that the government has proposed an IT Park towards this end and has acquired 100 acres of land for this. Kapoor said that it was the government’s endeavour to make the exhibition as interactive as possible and that there would be no barriers from the Government’s side in any private initiative in the IT sector. It was also on the government’s agenda to set up 100 cyber cafés in the NCR region to take the benefits of IT to the common man.

The exhibition itself was not exciting, with participants complaining about the lack of publicity and hence, lack of visitors. In fact, participants who came from as far as Baroda and Bangalore were disappointed with the visitor turnout at the exhibition. "When you come from a distant place incurring so much expenditure, one expects to get maximum mileage. However, the response has been very disappointing, " remarked a participant who did not wish to be named. Some prominent participants at the exhibition included VSNL, MTNL, Rittal India, Syscom, Shonk Technologies, ISPs like Net4India and Sampark Online.

The real action, however, was at the seminar venue. The first day saw important speakers like the Union Minister of Communication, Ram Vilas Paswan, and P S Saran, DTS Secretary. The theme of the Plenary Session was "State’s IT Vision" which was presided over by Sheila Dixit and attended by State IT and Industries Ministers from across the country. The theme for the second day’s seminar was "empowerment" wherein the Maharashtra Minister of Industries, Patang Rao, made a presentation to attract IT investment to the state. Prominent personalities from the industry too made presentations.

The highlight of the third day of was the award-giving ceremony where the awards were given away by Arun Jaitley, Union Minister for Information and Broadcasting. Some of the award winneres included Sunil Bharti Mittal for "IT Ratna of the Millennium"; AS Bansal, CMD, TCIL, for "Man of the Decade-Telecom"; and Ranjit Limaye, CEO, IBM, for "International Corporate Excellence".

tech-news