Whither free laptop promise, ask opposition parties

LUCKNOW:For the second consecutive time, the Yogi Adityanath government made no budgetary provision for free distribution of laptops as promised in its manifesto (Sankalp Patra) released by party president Amit Shah in January 2017, ahead of the Uttar Pradesh assembly polls.

This has angered the opposition parties who have accused the government of fooling people.

“The BJP made a slew of populist promises, including free laptops for all college students with 1 GB free internet per month. But no provisions for this were made in the budget presented on Friday,” opposition leaders said.

Last year, the state government had allocated just Rs 50 crore to provide free wi-fi services to students of universities and degree colleges across the state. For the past several months, deputy chief minister Dinesh Sharma has been talking about make the campuses wi-fi enabled but it hasn’t been done so far.

Samajwadi party national president Akhilesh Yadav said the BJP in its manifesto had promised laptops, but the budget was silent on it. “We wanted to take the state forward, arm youths with laptops but the BJP wants them to stay backward,” Yadav said on Sunday.

Congress Legislature Party (CLP) leader Ajay Kumar Lallu said, “The BJP had promised free laptops and wi-fi connection to college going youths in its ‘lok sankalp patra’, but the issue was not even mentioned during the budget session,” he said.

Ahead of the 2012 assembly elections, Akhilesh Yadav had announced distribution of free laptops to Class 12 pass outs. After coming to power in 2012, the SP government distributed 15 lakh laptops among the students. The laptop distribution began in March 2013 and continued till 2014 in a phased manner.

The state government had put off the scheme after Lok Sabha poll debacle in 2014. However, with an eye on 2017 assembly elections, the government relaunched the scheme, albeit with some changes. It decided to give free laptops to only meritorious students. SP distributed a record 18 lakh free laptops in 5 years. “Distribution of free laptop with 1 GB free data was one of the BJP’s poll promises but no mention was made of it in their first two consecutive budgets," said Ankita Khan, an undergraduate student of a degree college affiliated to Lucknow University.