Lucknow: After Akhilesh Yadav, now Yogi Adityanath will also distribute free laptops/tablets to about 10 lakh students registered under the Abhyudaya Yojana, a free of cost coaching scheme for students preparing for Civil Services, NEET, JEE, and other competitive examinations.
The Yogi Adityanath government has already earmarked Rs 20 crore for the purpose of laptop and tablet distribution. After coming to power in March 2017, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath had promised to provide free laptops to meritorious students.
Unlike the Akhilesh Yadav government, the Yogi government has, however, attached a rider for the distribution of laptops. Merit will be the eligibility criteria. Only those who study hard and qualify the written exam will be distributed free of cost laptops.
Opposition leaders alleged that the government's laptop freebies are meant to cover up its failure to generate job opportunities for unemployed youth in the state, keeping in view Assembly polls in 2022.
Lucknow Commissioner Ranjan Kumar, who is a member of a high-powered committee for the Abhyudaya scheme, said that it will be given to only those who will qualify for the exams. “We are framing rules for eligibility to get free laptops. We will announce the rules soon,” said Kumar.
He claimed that so far 5 lakh students have enrolled into Abhyudaya Yojana and out of them 50,000 are taking offline classes. Seeing the popularity of the scheme, the state government has extended for online registration till February 28, he added.
Under the scheme, the state government has also announced March 5 as the date for holding written examination to qualify for enrollment into offline coaching classes for NDA, CDS, JEE, NEET and March 6 for Civil services.
