NEW DELHI: Information and Broadcasting Minister Prakash Javadekar said that the 'Communicating India' programme initiated by the government as was a critical component of Digital India as an outreach mechanism so as to enable the flow of quality information to the people across platforms.

The Minister spoke after the inauguration of the regional language based SMS News service launched by All India Radio.

On Digital India, Javadekar said it was Prime Minister Narendra Modi's dream project and the objective is to enable people to communicate through digital mode.

The free SMS service, launched by AIR in September last year in English, will now be available in five Indian languages: Hindi, Marathi, Sanskrit, Dogri and Nepali. The news will be sent by AIR News Services Division.

The Minister said the SMS service aimed at providing important news to the subscribers in their preferred language on their mobile phones.

He wanted AIR to disseminate news in other regional languages as well through the SMS service and run a campaign through newspapers and Doordarshan News to create awareness about the service. This would enable a large cross section of society to access News on real time basis.

The SMS service in English launched on 9 September last year to provide AIR News on mobile sets free of cost which has already touched the database of over 300,000 subscribers.

NSD is also building up a database of the subscribers of its SMS service for providing customised messages. People desiring to avail this service can register at our website athttp://newsonair.nic.in/smsservice . They can also send an SMS in following format to 7738299899.

AIRNAMEAGEGENDERCODELANGUAGECODE

Different codes for the SMS are as follows: Gender codes: M for Male and F for Female. Language codes: H for Hindi, M for Marathi, D for Dogri, S for Sanskrit and N for Nepali.