Chhattisgarh Aims to Become India’s Leading AI State: CM Vishnu Deo Sai

Raipur, July 1, 2026/ Chief Minister Shri Vishnu Deo Sai said Chhattisgarh aims to emerge as India's leading state in artificial intelligence (AI), with a strong focus on skill development, employment generation, innovation and citizen-centric governance. Chairing a high-level review meeting of the Electronics and Information Technology Department on Wednesday, Shri Sai reviewed progress on the state's AI roadmap, mobile network expansion, BharatNet Phase-III, Sewa Setu, digital governance initiatives and other technology-driven projects. He said AI would play a key role in improving transparency, efficiency and public service delivery while enhancing productivity, incomes and access to quality services. The proposed AI Mission will focus on five pillars—AI skilling, innovation and startups, awareness and outreach, responsible AI, and AI-enabled governance. Under this initiative, AI robotics club and ‘hackathons’ will be orgnaised in schools. The state plans to train students and government employees, establish AI and robotics clubs, AI laboratories, Centres of Excellence and Data Labs, and strengthen the startup ecosystem through industry-academia collaboration, cloud infrastructure and seed funding. The meeting also reviewed plans to formulate a state AI policy aligned with data protection norms, deploy AI-based decision support systems across departments and expand multilingual digital services through the Bhashini platform. The platform will be utilised to make government services simpler, more accessible and inclusive. Reviewing digital infrastructure, officials informed that nearly 1,000 DBN-funded mobile towers have been installed over the past two-and-a-half years, while 577 additional towers have been approved- out of these- land allocation has been completed for 406 mobile towers, while the remaining 171 cases are targeted to be resolved within the next one month. Under BharatNet Phase-III, 4,114 gram Panchayats will be connected through a modern ring-topology network with expanded FTTH connectivity. The Chief Minister also reviewed the performance of the Sewa Setu portal, which currently offers 520 services across 36 departments through more than 16,700 service centres. Since April 1, 2025 more than 39.75 lakh applications have been received, with a disposal rate of 94.3 per cent. Officials informed that QR-based certificate verification, Aadhaar authentication, DigiLocker integration, treasury and e-challan systems, and DBT-based payment facilities have also been integrated into Sewa Setu, significantly enhancing the transparency, reliability and convenience of service delivery. The meeting was attended by Chief Secretary Shri Vikas Sheel; Principal Secretary to the Chief Minister, Shri Subodh Kumar Singh; Secretary to the Chief Minister, Shri Rahul Bhagat; Secretary, Electronics and Information Technology Department, Shri Ankit Anand; Joint Secretary to the Chief Minister, Shri Prabhat Malik; Joint Secretary, Good Governance and Convergence Department and Chief Operating Officer, CHiPS, Shri Mayank Agrawal, along with senior officials.