More than 15 lakh students of UP who have passed out of class 12 this year and have taken admission for higher studies will get a new year’s gift from the Akhilesh Yadav-government in the form of Hewlett Packard laptops.
Among the four bidders who had qualified, the American multinational IT corporation HP has quoted the lowest price of R19,058 for every laptop including taxes, while the highest price has been quoted by Acer at R25,199. The other two companies are HCL Infosystems at number two with R21,983 per laptop and Lenovo at number three with R23,919.
While the UP government had made a budgetary provision for R2,400 crore for buying laptops, the lowest bid from HP will cost the government approximately R3,000 crore for the 15 lakh laptops that it has to purchase for all those students who have passed class 12 and have enrolled for higher education, including those who have passed the madarsa exams.
?The total budgetary provision for the laptop scheme is Rs 2,400 crore, while R300 crore has been sanctioned for the tablet scheme. Even if the lowest bid is considered, it will offset the state budget provision and it would call for a reappropriation that would probably be done in the next budget,? said an official.
According to sources in the state government, the rates of all the bidders will be analysed and checked before sanctions are sought from the tender committee, the boards of UP Electronics and Madhyamik education department, the law and finance departments.
?Once all this is done, the matter will be finally cleared by the state cabinet. We hope to get all this work done within the next fortnight so that we can start distributing the laptops from January,? said an official, adding that while HP has assured that it would supply the entire requirement of 15 lakh laptops at one go, the others have said that they will be able to supply the order in tranches.
According to the bid document, which has been prepared by the project consultant KPMG, the selected vendor would be required to deliver the total 17.98 lakh laptops along with backpacks within 210 days of being awarded the contract.
The delivery schedule has been broken up in these 7 months. While 5% of the ordered quantity has to be delivered in the first 60 days, the next tranche of 5% has to be delivered between 61-90 days and another 25% each between 91-120 days and 121-150 days.
The last two installments are of 20% each in 151-180 days and 181-210 days. The laptops would have 14? LED HD screens, 2 GB memory, 500 GB hard disks, one year warranty, three languages including English, Hindi and Urdu.
