Conscious of an year’s delay in the distribution of free laptop computers to higher secondary and government/aided college students, the State government is planning to ensure that from this year on there is no longer any carry-forward of the previous year’s shortfall.
“We will make efforts to procure about 10 lakh laptops during the course of this year,” said a senior official of the Electronics Corporation of Tamil Nadu (ELCOT), the procurement agency for the laptops.
The figure has been worked out after adding the current year’s target of 5.5 lakh laptops to the previous year’s balance of around 5 lakh.
Tenders will soon be floated to clear the backlog for 2017-18. The Information Technology Department, under which ELCOT falls, expects that supplies will begin coming in from September.
The scheme covers Class XII students in government and government-aided schools and first-year students of government and government-aided polytechnic colleges. From this year, the government has decided to distribute laptops to Class XI students as well, the ELCOT official said.
Ever since the scheme was launched in September 2011, beneficiaries in a given year are mostly covered in the subsequent year, according to an official of the Special Implementation Department, which administers the scheme.
In 2017-18, the number of beneficiaries stood at 5.43 lakh, of whom 42,473 got computers. They included those who appeared in competitive examinations such as the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test. Besides, around 5.5 lakh students who should have been covered in 2016-17 were also given laptops.