The government has approved a scheme to connect all the 2,50,000 gram Panchayats through Optical Fibre Cable (OFC) for providing broadband connectivity to the Panchayats.In a written reply in the Rajya Sabha, the Minister of state for communications and Information and technology Milind Deora said that three pilot projects have been launched in October last year in three blocks of 3 different States. These include Arain Block in Ajmer District of Rajasthan, Pansanger Block in North Tripura District in Tripura and Paravada Block in Vishakhapatnam District of Andhra Pradesh. The Minister said, 100 Mbps bandwidth has been created at all 58 GPs in these blocks. He also informed that over 5,80,000 villages have been covered with Village Public telephones facilities as on 31st of January this year