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Amid the ongoing Covid crisis and schools and colleges going virtual, there are certain fake claims being circulated online stating that the government will provide free laptops to bridge the digital divide. The government fact-check, Press Information Bureau (PIB) fact-checker, refuted a claim today, on August 3, related to providing free laptops to students to support virtual learning.
As per the claim, the Ministry of Education has a distribution schedule for laptops to be given out to families to support virtual learning. The PIB fact-checker has debunked this claim and clarified that no such announcement has been made.
PIB took to Twitter and said: “A message along with a link is claiming that Education Ministry Of India will provide free laptops to all people to support virtual learning amid the COVID-19 outbreak.”
“PIBFactCheck : This claim is Fake,” it added.
A message along with a link is claiming that @EduMinOfIndia will provide free laptops to all people to support virtual learning amid the #COVID19 outbreak#PIBFactCheck:
▶️This claim is #FAKE
▶️Don’t forward such messages
▶️Never disclose personal information on such websites pic.twitter.com/nNg2Gb7IIl
Earlier on Monday, August 2, Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan in a written response to a question in the Lower House said that over 2.96 crore school students across 24 states do not have access to digital devices with Bihar reporting the highest number. In terms of absolute numbers, Bihar has the highest number of such students at 1.43 crore, followed by Jharkhand (35.52 lakh), Karnataka (31.31 lakh) and Assam (31.06 lakh). Uttarakhand has 21 lakh such children.
Other states with over 10 lakh children without digital device are Haryana, Odisha and Tamil Nadu, while Kerala has 9.5 lakh children in this category, he said. Due to the prolonged school closures forced by COVID-19, the teacher and learning process has moved online.
