CCTVs at Odisha exam centre stolen

Bhubaneswar: In an attempt to foil the efforts of the state education department to ensu-re free and fair examination, unidentified miscreants on Tuesday night stole CCTV cameras installed at an examination centre in Satapada in Odisha’s Puri district.

With the Plus Two annual examination conducted by Council of Higher Secondary Education (CHSE) scheduled to begin on Thursday, CCTV cameras were installed in Panchayat (Junior) College of Education and Technology at Satapada in Puri district.  The miscreants reportedly stole the cameras by trespassing into the school campus in the dead of the night.

Reports said the miscreants jumped the boundary wall of the school and took away the installed cameras.

The police has initiated an inquiry into the incident, source added.

After the leak of matriculation examination question papers and optical mark recognition (OMR) sheets missing, now CCTV theft from examination centre just a day before commencement of the exam appears to be a major challenge for officials concerned.

In another development, the state government on Wednesday suspended centre superintendent Bidyut Kumar Patra and assistant superintendent Satrughna Swain of SSD Padia High School in Malkangiri district in connection with missing of OMR sheets of the mathematics paper of 108 students.

On Tuesday, acting on the directive of the Board of Secondary Education (BSE) in Odisha, the Block Education Officer had lodged a complaint with regard to missing of OMR sheets.

As per the complaint, the optical mark recognition (OMR) sheets of nearly 108 students, who appeared for mathematics exam on Saturday, had gone missing from the school premises.