"Existing vendor Datawind will have to supply the rest of the 100,000 tablets in its present contract. It can also bid for the next tender," he added, putting rest to speculation that the Aakash vendor was evicted.
The Minister showcased the Aakash 2 tablet today before the media, which comes with a faster processor of about 700 MHz and a capacitive touchscreen. The procurement price of the tablets would be capped at Rs 2276, the same at which government procured the Aakash version 1.0 tablets.
The new tender will be for procuring about 50 lakh tablets, for distribution in colleges. "The tender will be handled by C-DoT and ITI," said Sibal addressing the media.
Only about 500 Aakash tablets have been distributed so far, that was on the day of Aakash launch last year, NK Sinha, additional secretary MHRD added. "There were problems with battery life. So we have improved upon the specifications in new version," he added.
Datawind, the British Indian firm supplying Aakash-1 tablets, issued a statement saying it has been vindicated from speculation, that it would not be allowed in Aakash-2 project.
"This vindicates our point that Datawind continues to be a serious player in the supply of Aakash both for the present order of the Ministry of HRD and also future course", said Suneet Singh Tuli, CEO of Datawind. "We never had any doubts about our position in the first place. With today's announcement by the Ministry, the same has been cleared to all those who were speculating", he further added.
The Minister also unveiled the HRD Ministry's ambitious project of Virtual Labs, which aims to provide simulated lectures and study material from IITs on technical subjects online. The website Vlabs.co.in will provide online simulation of complex lab experiments.
