Govt takes its time on laptops for toppers

Geetanjali Gayatri

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Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, December 28

Laptops meant for meritorious students, also a manifesto promise of the BJP in Haryana, are stuck in red tape nearly nine months after the Finance Department sanctioned funds for the purpose.

The School Education Department seems in no rush to give the students their due with verification of the deserving still underway. Sources in the the Finance Department said they had cleared Rs 50,000 per laptop for 500 students in April.

However, the School Education Department took nearly eight months to verify the toppers and draw lists of those eligible for the laptops.

Sources said a list of 235 students was now ready and the rate contract for the laptops was in the offing, implying that the students would get these next month.

The government had announced free laptops for 500 meritorious students who secured a minimum of 95 per cent marks in Class X board examinations held in 2016 under the state merit scholarship scheme.

While laptops were to be provided to the top 100 boy students in the government school merit list of the board, an equal number were to be given to top girl students belonging to the general category.

Laptops were to be given to both top 100 boys and girls belonging to the Scheduled Caste (SC) category and the rest to students from below poverty line (BPL) families in the merit list of the board.

“We asked the board for a merit list and asked meritorious students with 95 per cent marks and above to apply. The board does not have the BPL status of a student in its result, which is why the applications of students who applied under this category were referred back to the District Education Officer of the respective districts for verification. That process has been completed and we will purchase laptops as per rate contract,” said an official of the School Education Department.

According to the list of meritorious students finalised by the department, 97 boys and girls each had been found eligible in the general category.

Only 10 boys and 17 girls were eligible in the SC category. Twenty students would get the laptops in the BPL category.“We will be ready to give away the laptops in a week,” said ML Kaushik, Director, Secondary Education Department.

The sources maintained that 11 students had been “disqualified” since they had been pursuing their studies outside the state though this was not mentioned as an eligibility criterion when the decision on laptops was announced.