Days ahead of completing his first year as Uttar Pradesh chief minister, Akhilesh Yadav on Monday is all set to fulfill the Samajvadi Party's 2012 poll manifesto promise of distributing free laptops to Class 12 pass-out students of the state.
As the part of first phase of the free Laptop campaign, over one lakh students are expected to receive their laptops during the first anniversary week of the Samajvadi Party's government.
Yadav is expected to give away 10,000 HP laptops at a program organized in Colvin College, Lucknow.
One of the beneficiaries, Pankaj, a first-year medical student has expressed support to Yadav's next term in future UP assembly elections, reported NDTV.
With the launch of free laptop and tablets PC distribution program for class 12 and class 10 students, Yadav,UP's youngest chief minister seems to have struck a chord with the youth who will soon be eligible to vote, thus helping his poll campaign for his next term in office.
The state government's free laptop campaign is said to put a burden of close to ₹3,000 crores on the exchequer per annum. Few months back, the Indian arm of the world's top PC maker, HP (Hewlett Packard) India, won the contract to supply 15 lakh laptops on the condition of supplying 5 percent of the order within 60 days of signing the contract. The laptops will be distributed to all students over next few months who passed out in 2012.
Each laptop, reported to be costing around ₹19,058 (including taxes), is expected to come with a load of additional softwares which include MS Office, How to learn English, English-Urdu, Hindi-English and vice-versa dictionary. The laptop will also feature an additional open-source Operating System Ubuntu along with Windows 7 Home Basic OS.
The 14-inch laptops are expected to feature 2GB RAM with options of expansion up to 4GB and storage capacity of 500GB. Each device will be accompanied with a three-compartment laptop backpack with the government's logo on it.
To avoid reselling of the laptop in the black market, the device is embedded with security chips with custom made identification bar-codes for traceability. The laptop's front panel also adorns an un-removable UP government's logo 'Poore Hothe Vaade' (Promises will be fulfilled) with pictures of Akhilesh and his father Mulayam Singh Yadav.
The CM has also promised to distribute free tablet PCs to Class 10 students in the coming days, the tenders of which have already been floated on the UP Government's official website.
(With inputs from Hindustantimes.com)
