Chennai, Jan 9 (IANS): Alleging a scam in the supply of free laptops to the students, DMK president M.K. Stalin on Saturday appealed to the Tamil Nadu government to blacklist the Chinese company and levy a heavy penalty on the supply of the inferior products.

He also said the government should stop payment of the Rs 456 crore balance to the Chinese company.

According to Stalin, the Electronics Corporation of Tamil Nadu Ltd (Elcot) had issued a tender for procurement of 15.66 lakh laptops for free supply to students at an outlay of Rs 1,921 crore.

Without naming the Chinese company, Stalin said the company had participated in the bid and submitted two models and test reports on their performance, while stating the price of the two models to be the same.

Stalin said that as per the test reports, one laptop model has scored 465 marks and the other 265 marks, which means one of the models is inferior in performance.

According to the DMK leader, the government opted to buy the lesser performing laptop model which in turn had enriched the Chinese company unduly to the tune of Rs 469 crore.

Not only that, one of the tender conditions was that the laptops should have the provision to increase its memory capacity from 4 GB to 8 GB, but the laptops supplied by the Chinese company did not have that facility.

Stalin said the government had decided to give additional Rs 392 crore for the cost of the new motherboard so that the laptops' memory capacity could be increased to 8 GB.

The Leader of the Opposition in the Tamil Nadu Assembly Stalin said the state government has already paid Rs 1,465 crore to the Chinese company and steps are being taken to pay the balance of Rs 456 crore before the electoral model code of conduct kicks in.