The spat between IIT Rajasthan and Datawind has worsened, as supplies have completely stopped, even as the last date of validity of supplying the $35 Aakash tablets is just a month away.

The Letter of Credit for supply of tablets has been extended till March 31, but Datawind, the Aakash's vendor has asked IIT Rajasthan to release payments to get more supplies. "There is no question of supplying more tablets unless we get the payments for the previously supplied tablets," said Suneet Singh Tuli, CEO of Datawind.

IIT Rajasthan denied to comment. Datawind has supplied 10,000 tablets till now, at 2,276 each to IIT Rajasthan. Meanwhile, commenting on some news reports citing Datawind's ejection from the Aakash 2 tender, senior officials in the Ministry of Human Resource and Development said it may be a case of 'misquoting and misrepresentation' as 'no such process' is underway.

"It's purely a commercial dispute between two parties. But we have not come across any process to evict a particular vendor from its participation," said a senior government official, who is close to the tendering process of the Aakash 2 project. "For Aakash 2, agencies such as C-DAC and ITI will just be tender handling bodies. But they can't take the project forward without engaging private hardware companies."