The Centre has said that the Safe & Trusted AI pillar under the IndiaAI Mission is strengthening citizen trust by promoting the secure, fair and responsible development of artificial intelligence, while positioning India as a key contributor to global AI governance.
The Ministry of Electronics & IT (MeitY) said the IndiaAI Mission, approved in March 2024 with an outlay of ₹10,371 crore over five years, aims to build a comprehensive AI ecosystem in the country in line with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision of democratizing technology. The mission seeks to create employment and economic opportunities while addressing risks associated with AI.
The mission comprises seven pillars – IndiaAI Compute, Foundation Models, AIKosh, IndiaAI Application Development Initiative, FutureSkills, Startup Financing, and Safe & Trusted AI.
Providing an update on the mission’s progress, MeitY said support has been extended to Indian startups and institutions developing indigenous large language models (LLMs) and small language models (SLMs). A total of 20 sovereign AI model proposals have been identified for support, including 12 LLMs and eight SLMs.
Among the notable developments are Sarvam AI’s 30-billion and 105-billion parameter language models, Gnani.AI’s speech-to-speech model, BharatGen’s multilingual foundation models and Avataar AI’s video generation model. Domain-specific AI models for healthcare, language technologies and agentic AI systems are also at various stages of development.
To make AI computing more accessible, the government has empanelled 15 compute service providers, supported 237 AI projects, and sanctioned 93 lakh GPU hours.
Under the Application Development Initiative, 12 national-level hackathons and innovation challenges have been launched, leading to the development of 62 AI prototypes and deployment of 20 AI-based solutions.
MeitY said 686 fellowships have been awarded across undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral programmes in 178 institutions, while over 26 lakh people have completed the YUVA AI for All programme.
To strengthen AI education infrastructure, 27 India Data and AI Labs have been established, training more than 2,500 students, with work underway to set up another 188 labs. In addition, 58 Artificial Intelligence Centres of Excellence (AI-CoEs) are being established across States and Union Territories in collaboration with state governments and industry partners.
Highlighting the Safe & Trusted AI pillar, the Ministry said 13 Responsible AI projects have been approved in educational institutions focusing on bias mitigation, machine unlearning, privacy-preserving AI, explainability, deepfake detection and AI risk assessment.
Among the key initiatives is ‘Saakshya’, a multi-agent framework developed by IIT Jodhpur and IIT Madras for deepfake detection. Other projects include AI Vishleshak for improving audio-visual forgery detection and IIT Kharagpur’s real-time voice deepfake detection system.
MeitY also highlighted several institution-led research initiatives. NIT Raipur is developing responsible AI algorithms to reduce bias in healthcare applications, while IIT Delhi, in collaboration with IIIT Delhi and IIT Dharwad, is working on privacy-preserving machine learning models using federated learning. The Defence Institute of Advanced Technology (DIAT) is building explainable and privacy-preserving AI for security applications, while IIT Jodhpur is developing machine unlearning techniques to remove unwanted, sensitive or outdated information from generative AI models.
The Ministry these projects are aimed at making AI systems fairer, more transparent, privacy-preserving, secure and trustworthy.
The government has also established the IndiaAI Safety Institute to advance indigenous research on AI safety and governance. Announced in January 2025, the institute promotes the safe, secure, inclusive and trustworthy development and deployment of AI while overseeing projects selected under the Safe & Trusted AI pillar.
In addition, the India AI Governance Guidelines introduce a risk-based governance framework addressing algorithmic bias, misinformation, deepfakes and unintended societal harm. The framework proposes institutional mechanisms, including the AI Governance and Economic Group (AIGEG), the Technology and Policy Expert Committee (TPEC) and the AI Safety Institute (AISI), to strengthen oversight, standards and AI safety research.
MeitY said India’s approach to artificial intelligence is anchored in the vision of “AI for All”, balancing innovation with responsible governance and inclusive development.
It also highlighted India’s active engagement in international AI governance through platforms such as the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (GPAI), the G20, and the United Nations. As Chair of the India AI Impact Summit 2026, India facilitated key global initiatives, including the New Delhi Frontier AI Impact Commitments, the Guidance Note on AI Governance, and the Trusted AI Commons, aimed at promoting safe, trusted and inclusive AI worldwide.
The information was provided by Union Minister for Electronics and Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw in a written reply in the Rajya Sabha on July 24.
