India to Digitize 1.6 Million Place Names Using AI: BHASHINI & Survey of India Sign Historic MoU
New Delhi, January 21, 2026: In a significant step towards creating a unified national digital map, the Digital India BHASHINI Division (DIBD) under the Ministry of Electronics and IT has joined forces with the Survey of India (SoI). The two agencies signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on January 20 to leverage artificial intelligence for the mammoth task of digitizing, transcribing, and standardizing India's geographical place names, known as toponyms.
The Core Collaboration: AI Meets Cartography
The partnership aims to build a comprehensive, accurate, and multilingual National Geographical Name Information System (NGNIS). The Survey of India, as the nation's authoritative mapping agency, conducts extensive field surveys to collect place names in local languages. Historically, processing this vast amount of vernacular audio data into structured digital text has been a slow, manual endeavor.
This is where BHASHINI's expertise comes in. The MoU will deploy BHASHINI's AI-based speech-to-text and language processing technologies to automatically convert field-collected audio recordings of place names into standardized digital text in scripts like Devanagari and Roman. This collaboration targets the digitization of names for over 16 lakh (1.6 million) locations across India.
Strategic Objectives and National Impact
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Linguistic Accuracy & Preservation: The initiative will not only digitize names but also preserve their correct local pronunciation and linguistic nuances through audio documentation, safeguarding cultural heritage.
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Standardization for Governance: The data will be standardized according to the Survey of India Toponymy Manual and Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) codes. This ensures consistency across all government maps, digital platforms, and public information systems.
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Enhanced Public Service Delivery: A reliable, standardized geospatial database is critical for improving services in disaster management, infrastructure planning, logistics, and citizen-centric applications. Accurate place names are foundational for effective governance and emergency response.
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Strengthening Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI): The project exemplifies BHASHINI's mandate of embedding Indian language AI into the country's core digital infrastructure, making it more inclusive and rooted in local linguistic realities.
Official Vision
The collaboration is framed as a strategic move to support the National Geospatial Policy, 2022. It underscores the government's focus on developing indigenous, AI-powered solutions to solve large-scale administrative challenges and build a future-ready digital ecosystem.