Nitish Kumar launches the monitoring scheme in Patna on Thursday. Picture by Nagendra Kumar Singh

Patna, April 19: Schools beware! The government is watching you.

A new website, to be fed by a hi-tech telecom system, will monitor mid-day meals and attendance of children in schools across the state.

The website, launched by chief minister Nitish Kumar today, would contain detailed information on three points: the number of students present in the school, the mid-day meals taken by them and also whether the meal served to the children was according to the menu. The headmasters or assistant teachers-in-charge would have to furnish information to the department concerned on a day-to-day basis, which would be uploaded on the website.

“A new system of monitoring the mid-day meal scheme in the state has been developed by officials of the education department. The information given by the headmasters or assistant teachers-in-charge will be verified on a monthly basis. The village-level education committee will help the department officials in ascertaining the facts,” Nitish said at the launch at the state secretariat.

The new monitoring system has been christened Dopahar.

Under the system, headmasters of schools will get a phone call every day from Monday to Friday seeking information on the three points. The calls will be made through the Interactive Voice response System (IVRS). The information provided by the headmasters or assistant teachers in-charge will be uploaded on the website.

The chief minister warned of stern action against those giving false information. “I would like to suggest that you (education department officials) engage an independent agency for verification of the information collected from the schools. As meals are served between 12 noon and 12.30pm, the calls should be made after the meal is served to the children,” Nitish added.

He also suggested making provisions for registration of the complaints of villagers. “This is required to make the system more transparent,” the chief minister said.

He said it was owing to the sincere efforts of the education department officials that anomalies in the enrolment of students in government schools were detected and subsequently rectified. “We should not be satisfied with the initiatives taken to improve the mid-day meal scheme. A lot is to be done on this front,” Nitish said.

Earlier Rahul Singh, director of the mid-day meal scheme, said about 72,000 headmasters had been imparted training to make the programme a success. About 40 teams spread across 38 districts of the state were assigned to impart training. “The training programme concluded in Vaishali district on Thursday,” he said.

He said about 1.75 crore calls would be made in a year to keep a tab on the mid-day meal scheme in Bihar.