Former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav’s free laptop distribution scheme has come under the scanner.

According to Abhishek Upadhyay’s report for IndiaTV, it has now come to light, through a response to a Right to Information query, that there was serious discrepancy between the procurement and distribution of laptops in the scheme which aimed to provide students free laptops and tablets to encourage them to study further.

The previous Uttar Pradesh government reportedly purchased around 15 lakh laptops but distributed just six lakh of those purchased. The status of the remaining nine lakh laptops is currently unknown, says the report.

What is noteworthy is that the caretaker government of Uttar Pradesh ordered the purchase of 71,875 new laptops for Rs 13,490 each – just three days before the swearing in of the new Bharatiya Janata Party government in the state.

When asked about the discrepancy, government officials responded by saying not all the data for the scheme had been updated. However, RTI activist Shantanu Gupta pointed out that the extent of discrepancy was so large that a mere delay in updating data did not seem to account for it.