(Image source from: government.economictimes.indiatimes.com)

The Government has transferred millions of official email accounts to the Zoho Cloud service. On Wednesday, Jitin Prasada, the Union Minister of State and an important member of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, told Parliament about the transfer and the costs involved. This action follows an announcement made by the ministry in October 2025, which stated the intention to switch official email accounts to a cloud-based, safe, and expandable system, moving away from the old system. During the ongoing Budget Session, Prasada informed Parliament that 16.68 lakh email accounts have been successfully transferred to the Zoho Cloud service. The total cost for this transition was Rs. 180 crore, according to the minister. He also mentioned that the central government is still using email services from the National Informatics Centre, which indicates that the migration is not yet fully complete.

Interestingly, this is the first occasion where the Government has chosen a private company to manage email services for different ministries and departments. TMC MPs Rachna Banerjee, Deepak Dev Adhikari, and Mala Roy have questioned the financial aspects of this action. In a written reply, Prasada indicated that the payments depend on how many email accounts have actually been moved. Reports suggest that Zoho charges between Rs. 170 and Rs. 300 for each account monthly, based on the required cloud storage. The minister also mentioned that the sizes of the mailboxes range from 30GB to 100GB. Prasada pointed out that the goal of this migration is to provide ministries and departments with a “strong, independent, and secure official email system. ” Regarding the selection of Zoho, the MoS disclosed that the company was chosen as a master system integrator through a “clear and competitive bidding process” on the Government e-Marketplace. This process included an evaluation step for proof of concept with appointed government users.

Even with the extensive migration, the minister stated that the Government still depends on the NIC for official communications. This migration is described as a modernization effort to enhance security and scalability.