In a major digital upgrade, the Government has moved a large number of official email accounts to a cloud-based system to improve security and scalability.
Union Minister of State in the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), Jitin Prasada, informed Parliament that 16.68 lakh official email accounts have been migrated to the Zoho Cloud platform. The transition has cost Rs. 180 crore so far.
The migration follows an announcement made in October 2025 to replace the older legacy system with a more secure, scalable, and cloud-based infrastructure. However, the transition is not fully complete, as the Government continues to use the National Informatics Centre (NIC) email services alongside the new system.
This marks the first time the Government has partnered with a private company to manage email services across ministries and departments. Members of Parliament Rachna Banerjee, Deepak Dev Adhikari, and Mala Roy had raised questions regarding the financial details of this move.
In a written response, Prasada stated that payments are linked to the number of accounts migrated. Zoho is charging between Rs. 170 and Rs. 300 per account per month, depending on storage needs. Mailbox sizes currently range from 30GB to 100GB.
The minister explained that the objective of this shift is to create a “robust, sovereign, and secure official email system” for government use. Zoho was selected as the master system integrator through a “transparent and competitive bidding process” conducted on the Government e-Marketplace (GeM-CPPP), which included a proof of concept evaluation with government users.
Despite the large-scale migration, the Government continues to rely on NIC services for official communication. The move is being positioned as a modernisation effort aimed at strengthening security and improving system scalability.
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