Third edition of Smart Hackathon launched

NEW DELHI, Aug 29:
Union HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar today announced the launch of the third edition of “Smart Hackathon”, a national competition for students to develop digital solutions for real life problems.
In the earlier two editions, the HRD Ministry used to invite problem statements from ministries and State Governments and the students were free to choose from them and work on solutions.
“We have been doing it for two years. This is third edition of Smart India Hackathon and in September we will seek problem statements from ministries and State Governments. For the first time we will also seek suggestions from industry people if they have any unsolved problems which they are seeking solutions for,” Javadekar told reporters here.
“From October the students will be able to register. In the first edition of Hackathon, 40000 students had participated in the first edition while last year over 1 lakh students took part. We are expecting participation of around 1.5 lakh students this year,” he added.
In order to engage the youth in coming up with digital solutions to common problems, the All India Council for Technical Education under the aegis of HRD Ministry, had launched the hackathon in April, 2017. (PTI)