From Our Special Correspondent
Daijiworld Media Network

Bengaluru, Jul 5: Karnataka has decided to invite US Vice President Kamala Harris and Prime Minister Narendra Modi for its annual flagship event, Bengaluru Tech Summit 21, scheduled to be held from November 17 to 19.

The annual flagship event BTS 21 will be held in hybrid format, announced Deputy Chief Minister Dr C N Ashwatha Narayana, who is also the State’s Minister for Higher Education, IT/BT as well as Science and Technology, on Monday.

Addressing the press conference after convening a preparatory meeting with the officials of Department of Electronics, IT/Bt and S&T and Chairpersons of the vision groups, he said Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be invited to inaugurate the conclave and Kamala Harris, Vice-President of USA, will be invited to participate in the event.

In view of the possible third wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, the conclave bearing the tagline, ‘Driving the Next,’ will be organized in a hybrid format, comprising more of virtual and a part of the physical model.

Last year, the event was held in virtual mode for the first time and there was an overwhelming response from experts, delegates and more than 25 countries had participated.

This is expected to further increase in the forthcoming event, Dr Narayana said.

The first day of the summit would be ‘Thought Leadership Day’ (Hall of Fame), the second day will be “Technologies and Strategies Day’ (Hall of Techies) and the final day will be ‘Start-Ups Day’ (Hall of Future).

Prior to this ‘Beyond Bengaluru’ events will be conducted at Mysuru, Hubballi, and Mangaluru during the months of September and October and the dates will be decided shortly, he said.

The deputy chief minister said union ministers Nirmala Sitharaman, Ravishankar Prasad, Dr HarshaVardhan and Nitin Gadkari among others will be invited to participate in these programmes.

During these ‘Beyond Bengaluru’ events, the reports pertaining to KDEM, Engineering R&D, and IESA (Indian Electronics and Semiconductor Association) will be released, he said.

To give prominence to the academic participation in the events, it has been decided to actively involve the VTU and Higher Education Council in all the said events.

Dr E VRamana Reddy, Additional Chief Secretary, Department of IT/BT and S&T, P Pradeep, Secretary to DyCM, were present physically in the meeting.

Kris Gopalakrishna, Chairperson of State Vision Group for IT, Dr Kiran Majumdar Shaw, Chairperson of State Vision Group for BT, Prashanth Prakash, State Vision Group for Start-Ups, virtually attended.