Chautala made the announcements on Thursday while presiding over a meeting on the implementation of the state IT policy, which was announced on April 28. He said a cyber city of international standards would be developed by the Haryana State Industrial Development Corporation (HSIDC) in collaboration with foreign companies. Chautala said various departments of the state government had been asked to prune schemes which had outlived their utility so as to set aside five per cent of their budget for the implementation of the IT policy. He said HARTRON would provide technical assistance to various departments. Special IT cells would be created in each department . The policy aims to ensure 100 per cent IT literacy in the government by 2002 by imparting training to 2.5lakh employees.

Chautala said special workshops would be organised for officials by HARTRON, the Haryana Institute Of Public Administration and the State Institute of Nilokheri, among others. The Chief Minister said the IT programmes would be finalised by each department by December 31 to beimplemented by March 2001. Among the first government functions and departments to be taken online would be land records and registration of property deeds, the secretariat network, the secretariat of the chief minister, driving licences and tenders and purchases made by the government. Chautala said IT units would be provided uninterrupted power supply and would be exempted from electricity duty without limit on captive power generation.The excise and taxation department would also issue notifications to provide concessions on sales tax to the software industry within a fortnight.

As a follow-up to the announcements made by Chautala, the government set up an IT Initiative Fund with an initial corpus of Rs 100 million for e-governance and to promote IT in the state. State finance minister.

-- IANS