It was presented to prime minister by Jaswant Singh, chairman of the task force, at a meeting held in Parliament House. The prime minister expressed appreciation and happiness at the `magnificent work' done by the task force and congratulated its members for their dedication, commitment and competence.

The task force was constituted on May 22, through a notification issued by the office of the prime minister. It was given two major assignments. The first one, to be completed in 30 days, required the task force to identify bottlenecks in the path of development of it in India and recommend measures to remove them. The second task, to be completed in 90 days, was the formulation of a draft of the national informatics policy.

The report, submitted to the prime minister, contains 108 recommendations which cover not onlybottleneck issues but also a wide range of promotional issues. Besides, the task force has even held in-depth discussions with the ministries and departments concerned and obtained their prior approval on most of the recommendations aimed at de-bottlenecking development of it and enabling Indian software developers to establish global dominance in a short time.

The IT action plan aims at enabling India to achieve annual software and it services exports worth $50 billion in the next ten years. The report has a special section on `IT for all by 2008,' whose centre-piece is a major national campaign called `operation knowledge' focusing on the universalisation of IT and IT-based education at all levels of the education pyramid.

"In submitting this unanimous report," Jaswant Singh told the prime minister, "the task force has more than accomplished the first mandate given by the office of the prime minister."

Members of the task force explained to the prime minister the salient features of the action plan.Singh thanked the prime minister for his encouragement and personal support received in the course of the preparation of this report. He expressed confidence that the government will initiate necessary action for the formal acceptance of the recommendations at theearliest.