In a bid to push online governance in the country, Centre has allocated Rs 5,000 crore (Rs 50 billion) for various e-governance projects including IT infrastructure over the next five years, a senior official of the IT department said on Monday.

The position of "IT super power" for India could only be sustained if there are good e-governance projects to supplement the growth by the private sector and there is robust IT infrastructure. Keeping these in mind, the government has decided to spend Rs 5,000 crore over the next five years on e-governance," S Lakshminarayan, additional secretary, IT department, said at a seminar on micro-finance in IT.

Lakshminarayan said the IT department has decided to set up 200 CICs (Community Information Kiosks) in Jammu and Kashmir to spread the use and benefit of information technology in the state while adding that the government has already set up 487 CICs in North East.

Both these areas are lagging behind other states in IT, he said and added main focus of the government would now be more towards rural areas.

Stating that the digital divide is more in the eastern region, he said the main centre of software exports were the four major cities in West and South.

"23 per cent of the software exports come from Bangalore, 18 per cent from Chennai, 16 per cent from Noida and 11 per cent from Hyderabad. Western and Southern belts are becoming richer," he said.