As expected, the Indian Government is reportedly booting out Datawind from the Aakash tablet project, and is planning to assemble the tablet on its own, while retaining the same price tag of Rs 2250, reports Livemint. The report quotes Communications & IT Minister Kapil Sibal, who told PTI that the government has now roped in others including PSUs such as C-DAC and ITI, after it encountered problems dealing with Datawind, to manufacture a completely indigenous product. The statement contradicts the government's earlier claim that the tablet was completely indigenous. The Indian government had assigned a contract to Datawind to manufacture 100,000 tablets at Rs 1750 ($35) per unit. However, the report points out that Datawind was able to deliver only 10,000 tablets to IIT Jodhpur, while several tablets were reportedly sold in the open market, since it was available for online purchase at Rs 2500 from December 2011 and was sold out within a week of its launch. Quoting two unnamed senior government officials, the report states that the government is now planning to launch a revamped tablet at the same price tag. The tablet will apparently be completely indigenous and supervised by a committee comprising of members from the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), Department of Information Technology, IITs including IIT Kanpur, IIT Mumbai, IIT Chennai and IIT Jodhpur, and a few public sector units. The immediate need for tablets, will however be managed by Bharat Electronics Ltd (BEL) and Electronics Corp. of India Ltd. While this announcement seems promising, we hope that the government doesn't just…
