Karnataka IT minister Priyank Kharge speaks about AI push for multilingual citizen services
Information technology minister Priyank Kharge said the state would explore integrating Bhashini with its more than 700 citizen services under Praja Seva and e-Governance initiatives. Bhashini supports voice capabilities in 22 Indian languages and text services in 36 languages, according to govt data. It hosts more than 350 AI models and has processed over four billion language inferences. He said DeepTech and AI innovations could access grants of up to Rs 1 crore.
“Karnataka is one state, but it is many worlds,” Kharge said, pointing to the state’s linguistic and cultural diversity. “If technology is to truly make governance more accessible, it must speak to citizens in a language they understand,” he said, adding that the focus should be on making government services simpler, intuitive and citizen-centric. Kharge said the technology could particularly help citizens who find text-heavy digital interfaces difficult to navigate, by enabling voice-led access to government services. He also sought greater participation from Karnataka’s startup ecosystem, saying the government could become the “first customer” for innovative public-sector solutions under its Government First Policy.
Bengaluru: Karnataka govt plans to leverage the Centre’s Bhashini artificial intelligence (AI) platform to make digital governance and citizen services more accessible to people in their preferred languages, including through voice-based interfaces. Kannada is the predominant language, while Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, Urdu, Tulu, Beary and other languages are spoken in different parts of the state. Bhashini, developed under the National Language Translation Mission and implemented by the Digital India Bhashini Division under the ministry of electronics and information technology, is designed to bridge language, literacy and digital barriers. The platform provides AI-based services including automatic speech recognition, machine translation, text-to-speech, transliteration and optical character recognition. Its technologies are already being explored for public-facing applications, including railway services, legal assistance and agriculture. Kharge invited the Bhashini team to showcase its technology at the Bengaluru Tech Summit and explore wider applications across government-to-citizen services. Amitabh Nag, CEO of the Digital India Bhashini Division, spoke about the platform’s capabilities. Principal Secretary (e-Governance) Pankaj Kumar Pandey explained various measures initiated by the e-governance dept including adoption of AI in administration.
Kharge was speaking after inaugurating a Bhashini workshop organised by the dept of e-Governance at Vidhana Soudha on Thursday with a focus on exploring the use of AI-powered language, translation and voice technologies in govt service delivery.
You Can Also Check: Gold Rate in Bengaluru | Silver Rate in Bengaluru | Bank Holidays in Bengaluru | Public Holidays in Bengaluru | Bengaluru AQI | Weather in Bengaluru | Petrol Price in Bengaluru | Diesel Price in Bengaluru | CNG Price in Bengaluru | LPG Price in Bengaluru Stay updated with the latest Bengaluru news. Download the TOI App.