Bids for UPA’s Aakash tablet project may be scrapped

The government may scrap bids for the latest version of the Aakash tablet as none of the vendors, short-listed by the previous UPA government, were able to meet the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay’s technological specifications.

Updated on: Sep 11, 2014, 23:57:54 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The government may scrap bids for the latest version of the Aakash tablet as none of the vendors, short-listed by the previous UPA government, were able to meet the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay’s technological specifications.

Aakash was launched by former HRD minister Kapil Sibal as the world’s cheapest access device under the National Mission on Education in 2010 with the initial price tag of about US $ 35.

Soon after the launch, questions over quality of the device were raised and a technical committee was constituted under Rajat Moona of IIT-Bombay to evolve specifications for next generation of Aakash.

The tender for Aakash IV tablet was put out by the government’s procurement arm the Director General of Supplies and Disposals and eleven models were submitted by 10 vendors in January 2014.

Five were short-listed but none of the samples met the specifications. With the last UPA government keen on the Aakash tablets, conditional certificates — that new samples should meet the specifications — were issued to all vendors and they were asked to submit bids by mid March 2014.

The new samples again failed to meet the specifications.

According to government sources, the technical committee had, on a ministry proposal, suggested relaxation of some of the specifications to meet the technological handicaps including —the tablets not having webcam, 3G modems and upgraded hard drive.

“We may go for re-bidding for five million Aakash tablets as relaxing the tenders can be highly controversial. The government prefers to start on a clean slate and we have recommended re-bidding,” a senior government functionary said.

The final decision in this regard is likely to the taken by the Prime Minister’s Office.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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