Gujarat ranked first among all Indian states in terms of the number of times online learning initiatives by the state government were accessed on DIKSHA, the central government’s online learning portal. The state-wise analysis of data collected from the Ministry of Education industry, known as the DIKSHA portal (Digital Infrastructure for School Education), showed that Gujarat is at the top among other states in the “direct plays” category.
How online learning on DIKSHA is counted
“Direct plays” connotes the number of times all initiatives of the state government covering live and online learning sessions were accessed. Gujarat has over 1.75 crore ‘direct plays”. While, in other categories, like ETB-Energised Textbooks that have QR codes, aiming at providing access to digital content on numerous topics in physical textbooks, and “course plays,” it ranks at fifth and fourth position, respectively.
‘Course plays” is the count of online course content accessed by students. The state records over 6.76 crore course plays, the list of which is topped by Madhya Pradesh, with over 10.28 crore. Thus, in the total plays or clicks or number of times the students access all the digital content, Madhya Pradesh ranked at the top, followed by Gujarat in the second position.
The table Gujarat topped is a national one. DIKSHA was launched in 2017 by the then Vice President, M. Venkaiah Naidu, and is an initiative of the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) under the Ministry of Education, which bills it as “One Nation, One Digital Platform” for school education, according to the portal’s own description. The portal itself expands the name as Digital Infrastructure for Knowledge Sharing, and says it has been adopted by almost all states and union territories as well as central bodies and boards, including CBSE.
Each state runs its own corner of the platform. DIKSHA works on a federated architecture in which every participating state uploads and manages its own content and courses, in its own languages, while the Central Institute of Educational Technology at NCERT periodically checks what is uploaded against set guidelines, according to a Press Information Bureau backgrounder on the platform.
That is why online learning on DIKSHA can be ranked state by state: the plays are counted against content each state has put up. The same document describes DIKSHA as a key component of PM e-Vidya, the education ministry’s programme to keep learning going through online means, and lists the QR-coded energised textbooks behind the ETB count among the platform’s core tools, which link printed books to videos, interactive material and teacher guides.
Inside Gujarat’s numbers
“In addition to these rankings reflected in the Diksha portal’s dashboard, in Gujarat, the number of times learning activities undertaken using Diksha infrastructure by students is over 5.41 crore. This has been on an increase which peaked in the first week of this month,” said P. Bharathi, State Project Director of Samagra Shiksha. She further noted that the state rankings also put into focus initiatives from the government like the “home learning online course” for over 2 lakh government school teachers. These initiatives have paid off across Gujarat, save for a few districts like Dang, Kutch, and Dahod. Teachers in the stare have achieved an overall enrollment rate of 93 per cent district-wise.
The hour-long online outreach certificate course for teachers aims to educate teachers on how to effectively use different modes of learning depending upon a student’s availability. Among these, Dang has the lowest enrollment rate at 64% from roughly 1,850 teachers, followed by Dahod and Kutch, with over 73% for the online outreach certificate course for teachers launched on September 25. However, such low enrollment rates can also be attributed to internet issues in these districts. The districts that have achieved 100% enrollment rates are inclusive of Ahmedabad, Gandhinagar, Anand, and Navsari.
Also, from the enrolled, an equal percentage of 93 per cent have completed the course. Those failing to do so are asked to go through the program again. Around 30% still do not have any digital facility. For such students, textbooks are available and home-learning modules that are printed and distributed to them.
A recent survey conducted among 91.58 lakh students to assess the availability of technology medium through which a child could access home learning programs has brought out that while over 48% of kids had access to television sets, 59% had access to a smartphone or tablet.
What the teacher course draws on
Courses such as Gujarat’s hour-long outreach certificate sit inside a teacher training system the platform was built to carry. DIKSHA supports teacher professional development through NISHTHA, the national teacher training programme, and through state-specific modules, offering self-paced training that ends in a certificate, the Press Information Bureau document says. Those courses are delivered through a learning management system built into the platform, which also handles the enrolment and completion counts that let a state report figures such as the 93 per cent completion rate Bharathi described.
The platform was also designed with the gaps Gujarat’s survey exposed in mind. Content can be downloaded in advance and used without an internet connection, and states preload material on smart class boards so that it can be reached offline, according to the same backgrounder. For the three in ten Gujarat students with no digital device at all, however, the state’s answer in October 2020 remained the printed home-learning modules and textbooks distributed to them.
Since then: online learning on DIKSHA at national scale
The platform has kept growing since Gujarat’s October 2020 ranking. As of 27 June 2026, DIKSHA had recorded 575.25 crore learning sessions and 6,691.82 crore learning minutes, according to the Press Information Bureau backgrounder published on 28 June 2026. It supported 135 languages, 128 of them Indian, and carried 7,687 energised textbooks and 3.67 lakh pieces of electronic content, along with more than 614 virtual laboratories. The platform counted 2.25 crore registered users, with around 3 lakh active daily.
Courses have grown into a large part of online learning on DIKSHA. The June 2026 figures list 347 courses, 18.77 crore course enrolments, 14.82 crore completions and 12.79 crore certificates issued. The state table in the same document shows Gujarat still near the top: it had 14.64 lakh registered users, second only to Uttar Pradesh with 26.80 lakh and ahead of Bihar with 12.52 lakh. Madhya Pradesh, which led the course plays table in 2020, had 10.35 lakh registered users. The backgrounder reports registered users rather than the direct plays and course plays used in the 2020 dashboard rankings, so the two sets of figures measure different things and cannot be compared directly.
