Odisha chief minister to give free laptops to students next week

HP bagged the Rs 30-cr order this year

Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik will start distributing free laptops to meritorious students of the 2014-15 academic year on Wednesday, at Berhampur.

Free laptops were a pre-poll promise of his Biju Janata Dal party (BJD), meant for those who’d cleared the class XII exams. Patnaik, also the BJD supremo, had also announced distribution of free laptops while announcing unveiling the state’s youth policy, in April 2013.

This scheme is modelled on similar earlier schemes in Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan. The Odisha scheme is under the Biju Yuva Shashaktikaran Yojana.

The state government has decided to distribute 15,203 laptops for the year, with Hewlett-Packard having got the Rs 30-crore order.

The government had given an equal amount to Acer for 2013-14, for supplying 15,000 laptops at a unit cost of Rs 20,343.

For the current year, laptops have been procured for Rs 19,899 each.

Two bids were received in response to the tender floated by the information technology department. Acer, only competitor to HP, had quoted a little over Rs 23,000 for a unit.

Both vendors had qualified in the technical bid but HP was first on opening of the financial bids. A panel of experts evaluated each.

One of the criteria was that the original equipment manufacturer concerned must have an annual average turnover of at least Rs 300 crore from hardware supply and maintenance services in each of the previous three financial years.  And, adequate presence in Odisha, with  personnel to provide services in all 30 districts.