Puducherry joins free laptop bandwagon

PUDUCHERRY: Chief minister N Rangasamy, on Friday, announced that students of government schools who secured 75 per cent and above in their class XII public examinations would be given free laptops. The scheme has been started to encourage students to excel academically. The Chief minister also announced a hike in the annual cash prize from Rs one lakh to Rs 2 lakh to government schools in urban areas producing 100 per cent pass rate in public examinations and rural areas producing 90 per cent pass rate. The opposition Congress has urged the government to extend the free laptop scheme to all the students of the Union territory who pass in the plus two public examination.A V Veeraghavan of the Congress media cell said that in rural schools the standard of education was not the same as in urban schools and hence the students of rural schools would be deprived of the benefits of the laptop  scheme, which he felt would be beneficial to students of urban schools only.