On Akhilesh’s free laptops, BJP gives free skill training

UP government claimed to have distributed more than 14 lakh laptops to the students who passed class 12 in 2012.

BJP have already held such training camps in nearly 24 villages of Ghazipur, Sonbhadra and Jaunpur districts and have recently chosen a backward village, Chairai Gaon, in Varanasi, the Lok Sabha constituency of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

“Majority of the youths in villages are using the laptops only to watch movies and playing games. We are training the students to operate on Microsoft Office, Microsoft Excel, Adobe Photoshop, and Internet. Once trained, they can start earning some money by making data entries, or taking up typing and printing works,” said Karunesh Sharma, state convenor of BJP’s IT Cell.

Sharma said videos related to agriculture and farming consultancy are also uploaded to the laptops in the camp for the benefit of the villagers. Youths are also provided study material for operating these softwares and internet.

Each camp continues for 15 days where at least four BJP workers training the students. “We select backward villages with population upto 2,000 to hold these camps. Our local workers conduct a survey in the village to identify the youths who have got laptops from the state government. We then invite them to attend the camps,” said Naveen Pandey, IT cell convenor of Ghazipur where party has identified 64 backward villages and camps have so far been organised in 16 villages.

Other youths who have not got laptops from the government, also attend the training camps as they can then form groups with laptop holders to run a business or apply for jobs online. Youths using smartphones are also invited to the camps. They are trained in using their cellphone for helping farmers with online agriculture consultancy.

Pandey said they found five to seven youths in every village having laptops given to them free by the Akhilesh Yadav government. BJP workers are training these youths in connecting with the outer world through social media too. “We are opening their Facebook accounts too,” Pandey said.

“These camps will also help in expansion of the party organisation in rural areas by maintaining contact with youths there,” he added.