IN A decisive move to fortify its digital defences, the Madhya Pradesh Government has made the indigenous email platform Zoho mandatory for all official communication across the State. The directive, which covers all officers and employees, comes amid a surge in cyber attacks and fears of unauthorised access to sensitive Government data. The decision was finalised after a high-level meeting in Bhopal between the MP State Electronics Development Corporation (MPSEDC) and the National Informatics Centre (NIC). The initiative is a part of a larger national project spearheaded by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) and NIC to create a sovereign, secure and self-reliant digital ecosystem, reducing reliance on foreign cloud providers like Google and Microsoft. Crucially, there will be no change in email addresses.

 

Official domains such as @mp.gov.in and @nic.in will remain the same; only the backend infrastructure will shift to Zoho’s secure cloud. As an Indian private IT company, Zoho’s servers are located within India and function under NIC’s strategic control. The platform is compliant with CERT-In security audits and follows a Zero-Trust architecture, ensuring all sensitive data remains securely within national borders. Every officer will get a dedicated inbox with secure cloud storage. Each mailbox will cost the state Rs 2,000 annually as maintenance fee. To prevent dormant account misuse, any inbox not logged into for 45 consecutive days will be automatically deactivated. Nationally, the migration is already underway. The Centre told Parliament in April 2026 that 16.68 lakh official accounts have been moved to Zoho at a cost of Rs 180.10 crore, after Zoho won a seven-year contract in 2023 following 20 security audits.