BharatGen AI Set To Support All 22 Indian Languages By The End Of The Month

India’s sovereign Artificial Intelligence initiative BharatGen will complete the development of text-based AI models across all 22 constitutionally recognised Indian languages by the end of this month, the government informed the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday.

The information was shared by Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Science and Technology and Earth Sciences, Dr Jitendra Singh, while replying to a starred question (No. 63) raised by Rajya Sabha MP Shri Bhubaneswar Kalita during Question Hour.

Question in the Rajya Sabha

• In his question, Shri Bhubaneswar Kalita sought details on:
• the number of Indian languages currently supported by BharatGen and the roadmap for full language coverage,
• its applications in sectors such as healthcare, agriculture, education and governance,
• The Technology Innovation Hubs and Translational Research Parks operating under the BharatGen network, and
• The institutions involved in the BharatGen consortium and their roles.

Minister’s reply

Responding to the query, Dr Jitendra Singh said BharatGen is India’s first government-supported national initiative to develop sovereign foundational AI models, tailored specifically to Indian languages and societal contexts.

He informed the House that BharatGen spans multiple AI modalities, including text-based large language models, speech systems such as text-to-speech and automatic speech recognition, and vision-language models.

At present, BharatGen’s AI models support 15 Indian languages: Hindi, Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Maithili, Malayalam, Marathi, Nepali, Odia, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Sindhi, Tamil and Telugu. Text-based models for all 22 scheduled Indian languages are expected to be completed by the end of this month, he said, adding that speech and vision models will be expanded in subsequent phases.

Sector-specific applications

Addressing the MP’s question on applications, the Minister said BharatGen has already released domain-specific fine-tuned models such as Ayur Param for Ayurveda, Agri Param for Indian agriculture, and Legal Param for the Indian legal domain.

He added that BharatGen’s text, speech and vision models are designed for wider use across healthcare, agriculture, education and governance, to strengthen public service delivery and improve citizen access in Indian languages.

IIT Bombay-led consortium

Dr Singh further stated that BharatGen is being spearheaded by IIT Bombay under the National Mission on Interdisciplinary Cyber-Physical Systems (NM-ICPS) of the Department of Science and Technology, with implementation support from the TIH Foundation for IoT and Internet of Everything at IIT Bombay.

The BharatGen consortium includes leading institutions such as IIT Bombay, IIT Madras, IIT Kanpur, IIT Hyderabad, IIT Mandi, IIT Indore and IIIT Hyderabad, each contributing to areas ranging from multilingual model development and speech systems to legal AI research and evaluation frameworks.

Innovation hubs under BharatGen

In reply to the question on infrastructure, the Minister said two Technology Innovation Hubs, the TIH Foundation for IoT and IoE at IIT Bombay and IITM Pravartak Technologies Foundation at IIT Madras, are currently active as part of the BharatGen network under NM-ICPS.

Part of IndiaAI Mission

Dr Singh reiterated that BharatGen is a key component of the IndiaAI Mission, approved in March 2024 with a budget allocation of ₹10,371.92 crore. Launched in September 2024, BharatGen has been conceived as a national foundational AI model with sovereign ownership and a strong focus on India’s linguistic and cultural diversity.

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