New Delhi: The government’s BharatGen AI initiative will cover all 22 scheduled Indian languages by June 2026, the Parliament was informed on Wednesday. The move is part of a roadmap to create sovereign foundational AI models tailored to Indian languages and societal contexts.
“BharatGen currently supports nine Indian languages — Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Malayalam, Bengali, Punjabi, Gujarati, Telugu, and Kannada,” Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Science and Technology and Earth Sciences Dr. Jitendra Singh said in a written reply to a question in Lok Sabha. “By December 2025, the coverage will expand to 15 languages, including Assamese, Maithili, Nepali, Odia, Sanskrit, Sindhi, and others,” he added.
India’s First National AI Initiative
BharatGen is India’s first government-supported national AI initiative, spanning text, speech, and vision-language systems. It has developed applications for agriculture, governance, and defence, with pilot projects already conducted.
“Once fully deployed, these solutions will be made available across all states and districts,” Dr. Singh mentioned. The project is being implemented under the National Mission on Interdisciplinary Cyber-Physical Systems (NM-ICPS) of the Department of Science and Technology.
The Technology Innovation Hub (TIH) for IoT and IoE at IIT Bombay is leading the programme, overseeing model development, academic partnerships, data infrastructure, and strategic planning.
Dr. Singh said BharatGen is currently in the pilot deployment phase and has not yet been released for public or institutional use. “However, once fully operational, it will be extended nationwide, benefiting rural and semi-urban areas as well,” he added.
The government may also explore partnerships with research institutions in Karnataka to expand BharatGen’s reach and applications. Meanwhile, the LLM model was launched by the Union government in June at the BharatGen Summit.
“BharatGen is a national mission to create AI that is ethical, inclusive, multilingual, and deeply rooted in Indian values and ethos,” said Singh while addressing the launch event on June 2.
