The National Informatics Centre (NIC), which provides IT support to the government, was established in:

The National Informatics Centre (NIC) was established in 1976 by the Government of India as the main organisation to provide information and communication technology (ICT) and e-governance support to the central government, state governments, union territories and district administrations. It works under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY). Its headquarters is in New Delhi.

NIC was set up as a project with assistance from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Dr N. Seshagiri was its founder Director-General and is regarded as one of the pioneers of e-governance in India.

NIC has played a key role in the development of e-governance in India:

In the 1980s, it set up NICNET, a nationwide satellite-based computer network connecting all district headquarters, one of the largest such networks in the developing world at the time.

It designs, develops and hosts websites and portals of government departments, such as india.gov.in (the National Portal of India) and the websites of ministries. Most government websites end in "nic.in" or "gov.in".

It has developed many important applications and platforms, such as e-Office, the Public Financial Management System (PFMS), e-Courts, the Integrated Management of Public Distribution System, the e-Hospital system, the Parivahan and Sarathi transport portals (vehicle registration and driving licences), the CoWIN platform (used for COVID-19 vaccination), the e-Way Bill system for GST, and the Aarogya Setu app (with others).

It operates national data centres and cloud services ("MeghRaj"), and provides secure email (NIC email) and video conferencing services to the government.

Other related bodies:

• Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC): Pune, set up in 1988; it developed India's first supercomputer, PARAM 8000, in 1991.
• Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In): set up in 2004, the national agency for cyber security incidents.
• Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI): set up in 2009 to issue Aadhaar numbers.
• National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI): set up in 2008; it runs UPI (launched in 2016).

Why not the other options?

• ✗1969 is the year ISRO was formed and 14 banks were nationalised.
• ✗1984 is incorrect for NIC.
• ✗1991 is the year PARAM 8000 was developed and economic reforms began.