Bhubaneswar: Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on Friday distributed laptops to 10 meritorious Plus-II pass outs of 2019 and wished them a bright future.
As many as 15,000 students including 5509 SC/ST students will get a laptop each this year under the Biju Yuva Sashakatikaran Yojana.
Talking to the media, Higher Education Secretary Saswat Mishra said as part of progressive youth policy for the benefit of the young generation of Odisha, the state government has been distributing free laptops to Plus II meritorious students with a vision to inspire and upgrade their skills. This programme started in 2013 and 15,000 free laptops are being distributed every year since then. Till now, 90,203 students have been covered under the scheme. On an earlier occasion, 15000 top students of Arts, Science, Commerce, Vocational and Sanskrit streams and different categories of General, SC and ST were selected on merit basis at the state level.
Mishra said that this year, there is a change in the selection criteria. Instead of selecting top students at the state level in different streams and categories, top students from each district in different streams and categories have been selected by a selection committee constituted by the government. This method has been adopted to give a better representation to meritorious students of all the 30 districts of the state.
Keeping in line with the 5 Ts programme, another 15000 meritorious students have been selected under the scheme for the year 2019-20, observing transparency in the selection of students, he added.
Among others, Higher Education Minister Arun Sahu, Chief Secretary Asit Tripathy, Chief Advisor to Chief Minister’s Office (CMO) R Balakrishnan, Mo College Principal Akash Das Nayak and senior officials of the Higher Education Department were present on the occasion.
