New Delhi, Feb 1 (IANS): While presenting the Union Budget 2022-23 in Parliament on Tuesday, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced the setting up of a digital university in the country as several children have suffered due to the Covid-19 pandemic-induced closure of educational institutions.

"A digital university will be established to provide access to the students across the country for world class quality universal education with personalised learning experience at their door steps," the Finance Minister said.

Sitharaman informed that the university will be built on a 'hub and spoke' model.

"The university will be built on our networked hub and spoke model with the hub building cutting edge ICT expertise," she said.

The Finance Minister further said education in this university will be made available in different Indian languages and ICT formats.

"The best public universities and institutions in our country will collaborate as a network of hub and spoke," she said.

Sitharaman said due to the pandemic-induced closure of schools, children particularly in the rural areas and those from Schedule Castes and Schedule Tribes and other weaker sections have lost almost two years of formal education.

She said that majority of the affected children were from government schools and the Centre recognises the need to impart supplementary teaching and to build a resilient mechanism for education delivery.

"For this purpose one class -- one TV channel programme of PM e-Vidya will be expanded from 12 to 400 TV channels," Sitharaman said.

She added that this will enable all states to provide supplementary education in regional languages for classes 1 to 12.