CCTV cameras installed at exam centres, STF deployed

Lucknow: The Uttar Pradesh government has made foolproof arrangements, including setting up of control rooms for live monitoring of exam centres, to ensure that there are no cheating incidents during this year's state board examinations which began on Thursday, according to an official statement.

Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has also issued instructions to book those found involved in facilitating cheating during examinations under the National Security Act (NSA), the statement said. The NSA allows detention of a person up to a year without any charge. Over 31 lakh students are appearing for class 10 board exams and over 27 lakh for class 12 board exams, officials said here. Two control rooms have been set up in Lucknow for monitoring the examination centre while a control room has also been set up in the 75 districts each.

An FIR will also be lodged against the invigilators and centre administrators involved in helping candidates in copying, it said. If any disturbance is found in online monitoring of a centre, the nodal officer has been made responsible to inquire regarding the same by contacting the administrator of the concerned examination centre. About 3 lakh CCTV cameras with voice recorders, Digital Video Recorder router devices and high-speed internet connections have been provided in about 1.43 lakh examination rooms of all examination centres. Arrangements have been made for live monitoring of all 8,753 examination centres through webcasting in all 75 districts and through the control and monitoring the centres at the state level.

The Special Task Force (STF) of state police and local intelligence have been activated to monitor all sensitive and highly-sensitive examination centres. There are 16 districts in the state which have been kept in the most sensitive category, which include Ballia, Azamgarh, Mau, Ghazipur, Chandauli, Jaunpur, Deoria, Gonda, Mathura, Aligarh, Mainpuri, Etah, Baghpat, Hardoi, Prayagraj and Kaushambi. In view of the security arrangement of question papers at the examination centres, a room separate from the principal's room has been set up for securing the question papers in a double lock almirah, it said.