More than 2,000 schoolchildren from Vellore and 3,000 from Tiruvannamalai districts received laptops from the School Education Department on Saturday. These students were issued laptops for 2019-20. Students who had just completed their studies in March 2019 were not given laptops, forcing them to stage protests at their respective schools.
At a function held at Sri Venkateswara Higher Secondary School, Vellore, Minister for Commercial Taxes and Registration and Stamp Act, K.C. Veeramani, distributed laptops to students. Distributing laptops costing ₹2.13 crore to 2,117 students from 11 schools, he said that 83,163 laptops costing ₹83.50 crore would be distributed to students studying in higher secondary classes in Vellore district. The initiative also covers students of 2017-18 and 2018-19, according to school education department sources.
District Collector S.A. Raman presided over the function. Vellore district Chief Educational Officer S. Mars, MLAs S. Ravi (Arakkonam), G. Loganathan (KV Kuppam), G. Sampath (Sholingur), and P. Karthikeyan (Vellore) participated.
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At a function organised at Arni and Cheyyar, Minister for Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Sevvoor S. Ramachandran distributed laptops to students and said that the scheme would be extended to 22,758 students studying Plus 1 and Plus 2. Tiruvannamalai Collector K.S. Kandasamy, Cheyyar MLA Dusi R. Mohan and Tiruvannamalai district Chief Educational Officer V. Jayakumar participated.
Students held protest at the Shanmuga Factories Government Higher Secondary School, Tiruvannamalai, Government Higher Secondary School, Melpallipattu, Chengam, Government Higher Secondary School in Kuppam village, Kannamangalam, and Government HSS., Gandhi Nagar, Vaniyambadi. Students belonging to the 2018-19 batch gathered in the school premises to highlight their grievances.