The Tamil Nadu government under its free laptop for students scheme will supply 5.36 lakh laptops during the academic year 2016-17 said M Manikandan, IT minister.

Speaking at Connect 2016, an annual conference and exhibition on information, communication technology (ICT), organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry, Manikandan said the AIADMK government, during its previous tenure, supplied around 32.35 lakh free laptops to students in the state.

On the e-governance initiatives of the government he said 10,486 e-seva centres are functioning in the state enabling people to transact online, to obtain getting birth/death certificates and such.

The Global Investors Meet, held last year by the previous AIADMK government, attracted Rs 10,950 crore investments in the IT sector, he said.

Speaking at the event, Kris Gopalakrishnan, one of the founders of Infosys, said that the Indian IT sector is growing at 10 per cent rate, with the potential to create one lakh jobs.

Vijay K Thadani, vice chairman and managing director of NIIT, said digitisation is the next wave of specialisation and that the education system should rise to that demand, just as IT companies are now reskilling their workforce in digital technology.