Minister for Information Technology M Manikandan has assured that all students who had passed out from government and government aided schools in the academic year 2017-18 and 2018-19 would be given free laptops and appealed to the students to give up their agitations.
“All students who have passed plus two in the two previous academic years would surely be given free laptops,” the Minister said addressing students after distributing free laptops at functions held here and Thirupullani on Saturday.
The students need not resort to agitations as the schools in which they have studied would call them and distribute free laptops in the coming months, he said. As per the recent Government Order, the government has decided to cover all plus two and polytechnic students in the academic years 2017-18, 2018-19 and 1019-2020 in a phased manner on priority basis.
Those who were studying plus two during this year in government and government aided schools would be given first priority, followed by those studying plus one in the current academic year. Those who had studied plus two in academic year 2018-19 would be given third priority, 2017-18 fourth priority and polytechnic students, fifth priority, he said.
“Students need not succumb to instigations as all of them will get free laptops,” he assured. The government, which has been distributing free laptops since 2011-12 has so far covered 54.5 lakh students, he said. The government proposed to distribute 15.5 lakh laptops, including 9,017 laptops for this district during the current academic year, he said. He had distributed laptops to 4,506 students in the district last week and to 2,227 students on Saturday, he said.
Mr. Manikandan also distributed HD (High Definition) Set Top boxes on behalf of the Government Cable TV Corporation to 136 Government High and Higher Secondary Schools to help students get access to online teachings, he said. Speaking on the occasion, Collector K. Veera Raghava Rao said the free laptops would help students to develop their knowledge on communication and information technology and prepare for NEET examination by availing online teaching materials and taking online tests.
Published - June 29, 2019 09:08 pm IST
