Its earlier deadline of August 31 had come and gone, but several of the government departments were yet to obtain Y2K compliance certificates from the two official agencies concerned. "We are, naturally, worried over certain departments lagging behind the schedule," admits a senior official in the State Information Technology (IT) Department. But, the IT official hastens to add, "We still have enough time to make computers Y2K compliant in all the government and semi-government departments and hope to receive compliance certificates from these departments by November 15. Reminders have been issued to the departments lagging behind the schedule to get their computers upgraded at the earliest."

In an exclusive chat with the Express Newsline on Sunday, Saumil Raval, the chief executive to State IT Minister Bimal Shah said though heads of some of the government departments and boards and corporations had already obtained the Y2K compliance certificates, several of them are yet to submit the same to the IT department.

"We are mainly concentrating on key departments and corporations to overcome the Y2K problem in time, while teams of experts drawn from the NIC and Indext-b have been put on job to carry out extensive checks on computers in other government sections in the Sachivalaya," he said.

Raval, a gold medalist in MBA (Information Technology), said most of the computers installed in various government departments "have Microsoft Windows '95 and '98 and NT server, which are already Y2K compliant". But, there are some 486 machines which have to be upgraded to make them Y2K compliant.

Principal Secretary to the Chief Minister P K Laheri said it was the State Bureau of Economics and Statistics that would have a Y2K problem as obsolete 286 and 386 models were still being used there. "The government has initiated efforts to replace them with the latest models and upgrade their programmes to resolve the problem," he said.

Laheri said in certain departments, pentium processors were introduced in the 486 models after upgrading their old programmes, while in other cases the government had purchased new Y2K compliant pentium models at a cost of Rs 5 crore and installed them last year. "We don't face any Y2K problem here." He said the important autonomous government bodies like the Gujarat Electricity Board (GEB) and the State Road Transport Corporation had already obtained the Y2K compliance certificates, while other departments like Pay and Accounts, Treasury, Irrigation, Pension and Provident Fund and Gujarat State Financial Services Ltd were under process of obtaining the certificates.

When contacted, Minister of State for Energy Kaushik Patel said his department had launched efforts on a war-footing to make the computers installed in the various GEB power units Y2K compliant. Private power generation and distribution companies like Ahmedabad Electricity Company, Surat Electricity Company and Essar Power Ltd had also initiated similar measures. "We are taking all measures to prevent power generation units, the grid system and other commercial activities from being affected by the Y2K problem," Patel said. Some of the GEB units, including the one at Wanakbori, Gandhinagar Unit 5, Utran and Kadana, had already been given Y2K compliant certificates by BHEL, he said. The process to make Gandhinagar power units 3 and 4, Panandro unit 3, Dhuvaran Vibration Control and Load System Y2K compliant is on, and is expected to be over shortly, he says.

The teams of IT officials are also busy carrying out checks in computers -- most of them 486 models -- installed in the various government-run hospitals in different parts of the State, mainly in major cities of Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Surat, Rakot, Jamnagar and Bhavnagar.