There is some confusion on the status of the Aakash Tablet project with the Minister of Human Resource Development MM Pallam Raju making contradictory statements over the last week. - On Friday, a Livemint report suggested that the government is close to shutting down the project, with Raju stating that the overall focus of the project should be on how they enable students to access educational content and allow them to access this content on a device of their preference. The report also mentioned that the Higher education secretary Ashok Thakur was unwilling to comment on whether the government is still going ahead with its earlier plan of procuring five million additional Aakash tablets for distribution to students in the country. However, he also reportedly noted that there was lot of gap in the supply of these tablets and the ministry had told Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay, which is currently looking after the Aakash tablet project, to take requisite action against Datawind if the company fails to supply 100,000 tablets with the March 31, 2013 deadline. - On Sunday, Raju however contradicted his own statement, stating that the government is planning to launch the next version of Aakash tablet shortly, as indicated by a The Economic Times report. While the minister claimed that the tablet performance had improved with every tablet version, he noted a failure on the tablet production front and said that the ministry is currently looking into the matter. - An Indian Express Report also suggests that the HRD ministry has set…
