Donning the mantle of Santa, UP CM Yogi Adityanath will launch the populist scheme on Dec 25

By VIRENDRA SINGH RAWAT

LUCKNOW, Dec 20 (The CONNECT) - Donning the mantle of Santa, Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath will launch the populist scheme of distributing free tablets and smartphones on December 25.

On Saturday, Yogi will give away 100,000 of these gadgets to the final year students at a mega programme in Bharat Ratna Atal Bihari Vajpayee Ekana Stadium, Lucknow.

Interestingly, the Christmas day also marks the birth anniversary of former PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee, one of the tallest leaders of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

The CM is scheduled to distribute 60,000 smartphones and 40,000 tablets to the youth, including girl students. The beneficiaries include final year students of MA, BA, BSc, ITI, MBBS, MD, BTech, MTech, PhD MSME and Skill Development among others.

Earlier, the UP government had announced to distribute free smartphones and tablets to nearly 10 million youth to upgrade them technologically and facilitate digital learning.

According to UP special secretary, IT and electronics more than 3.8 million youth have already registered on Digi Shakti Portal even as registration of others was still going on.

The state government has placed orders with prominent companies like Lava, Samsung and Acer for the supply of smartphones and tablets. For a transparent procurement process, the orders were issued through the GeM (government e-marketplace) platform run by the Centre.

In the first phase, an order of more than Rs 2,000 crore has been issued for the purchase of smartphones and tablets. It comprises 1.05 million smartphones at the rate of Rs 10,740 per unit and 720,000 tablets at the rate of Rs 12,606.