UP chief minister Akhilesh Yadav will celebrate his first anniversary as chief minister in March by distributing free laptops to students who passed their intermediate examination last year.
Free laptops had been promised by the Samajwadi Party in its election manifesto during the 2012 Assembly elections and had proved to be one of the most attractive poll promises of the party.
According to official sources, in the first phase about 10,000 laptops will be distributed in Lucknow and Mainpuri districts to students from government and government-aided schools.
The laptops that will cost the state exchequer about `2,800 crore will be embossed with tamper-proof stickers of Mr Akhilesh Yadav and SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav.
The laptops have been loaded with an open source operating system (Ubuntu) apart from Windows 7 Home Basic. The systems will also come pre-loaded with MS Office software, a specially designed computer literacy programme for first-time users, spreadsheets, multimedia and cloud computing among other things.
“A special software, designed by the British Council, will have ‘How to Learn English’, along with ‘Hindi to English’ and ‘English to Hindi’dictionaries. The students will also have access to a photo gallery, movie maker software, photosynth and editing software,” said an official of the UP Electronics Corporation.
In another student-friendly initiative, the laptops will also be pre-loaded with sample papers of engineering and medical entrance test papers.