HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar announces launch of third edition of Smart Hackathon

New Delhi: Union HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar on Wednesday 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 first two editions, the HRD ministry invited 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 the 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 ask 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, 40,000 students had participated.

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 for common problems, the All India Council for Technical Education under the aegis of HRD ministry, had launched the hackathon in April 2017.

Twenty-nine departments under various ministries presented 598 problem statements for which they did not have digital solutions.