New Delhi: Minister for education, IT and electronics Nara Lokesh thanked the minister for railways Asawni Vishnav, for making maximum allocations in the railway budget to the state.

Lokesh called on the railway minister at Rail Bhavan in New Delhi and explained to him the steps being taken by the state government for the progress of IT and electronics industry and also the policies being adopted.

The IT Minister particularly informed Aswani Vishnav about the efforts being made like Ease of Doing Business along with Speed of Doing Business and the permissions being granted on a war-footing basis to attract investments in IT and electronics sectors.

Lokesh made an appeal to the Union minister to set up in Andhra Pradesh the AI Centre of Ex-cellence for Education which was announced by the Centre recently while presenting the budgetary allocations to Parliament. Making it clear that Andhra Pradesh is ready to accept the opportunities with the utilisation of Artificial Intelligence, he sought the Centre’s coopera-tion in this regard.

He also wanted the Central cooperation for the Data City being set up in Visakhapatnam as such data cities will be in great demand in the coming days with AI.

The minister also wanted the Centre to extend its support for establishment of electronics companies in the State as setting up Data Cities and electronics companies will provide large scale employment oppor-tunities to youth.

Assuring all kinds of support from the state to the Centre by becoming a partner to achieve the goal of Viksit Bharat as the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, aims at reaching 30 trillion dollar target by 2047, Lokesh told Aswani Vishnav that the state government is formulating various plans to fulfil the promise of providing 20 lakh jobs to the youth in these five years. Pointing out that about 800 poor families have been living for the past several years by constructing houses in the railway lands in Mangalagiri which have been lying waste, Lokesh requested the Union minister to allocate these lands to the state on humanitarian grounds so that these lands will be allotted to the poor families.

Aswani Vishnav responded positively to this and promised to take necessary measures soon after examining all aspects.