Distribution of laptops under Vidyakiranam begins

Thiruvananthapuram

Minister for General Education V. Sivankutty inaugurated the distribution of 477 laptops under the Vidyakiranam project of the State government to provide digital equipment to students for online education here on Thursday.

The Minister distributed the laptops to 100 students of the Government Higher Secondary School for Girls, Cotton Hill. Director of General Education Jeevan Babu K. and Kerala Infrastructure and Technology for Education (KITE) Chief Executive Officer Anvar Sadath K. were present.

KITE had procured the laptops using the CSR contribution of various companies. Of the 477 laptops, 100 were for Cotton Hill school and the remaining 377 will be distributed in schools in Wayanad district.

Earlier, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan had inaugurated the distribution of 45,313 laptops as part of Vidyakiranam for Scheduled Tribes students in Classes 1 to 12 and Scheduled Caste students in Classes 10 and 12.

The government had issued an order on March 27 authorising KITE instead of the IT department to procure the laptops at fixed intervals through e-tendering on the GeM (Government e-Marketplace) portal using funds received for Vidyakiranam in the Chief Minister’s Distress Relief Fund (CMDRF) account under the supervision of the Finance department.