Villages with no mobile coverage have over 25% tribal population: Govt in LS

Out of over 1.2 lakh villages registered with the Registrar General of India as of November 2019, around 1,00,030 (83%) villages have mobile network coverage while 20,583 villages do not have any coverage. These remaining 18% villages have over 25% tribal population in their respective districts, the government said in Lok Sabha on Wednesday.

New Delhi:Minister of State (MoS) for Communications, Devusinh Chauhan informed the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday that 17% of villages in India do not have mobile network coverage, and these areas are typically dominated by tribals with more than 25% of their population there. The Minister was responding to a question from YSRCP MP Adala Prabhakara Reddy asking whether the government has achieved 100% mobile network coverage in all tribal areas of the country.

Out of over 1.2 lakh villages registered with the Registrar General of India as of November 2019, around 1,00,030 (83%) villages have mobile network coverage while 20,583 villages do not have any coverage. These remaining 18% villages have over 25% tribal population in their respective districts, the government said in Lok Sabha on Wednesday. The data was provided by Telecom Service Providers (TSPs), the Department of Telecom’s field unit, and State Governments as of March 2022, it added.

The reasons for not having a mobile network in these villages include inter-alia, remote and tough terrain, areas diversely located with scattered populations, and commercially non-viable operations. The Union Cabinet has approved a project for 4G mobile coverage saturation to cover all such uncovered villages, the MoS added.

As per the data shared by the MoS on the State/UT-wise details of the status of mobile network coverage in the tribal area of the country where the tribal population is more than 25%, Odisha tops the list with 14 such districts including 24013 number of villages, 18240 are the Number of the mobile covered village while in 5,773 there is no mobile connectivity, followed by 2245 such villages in Arunachal Pradesh, 2040 in Meghalaya, 1741 in Chhattisgarh, 1453 in Madhya Pradesh and others.