Patna, Aug. 10: State human resource development (HRD) minister P.K. Shahi has welcomed the decision of installing closed-circuit television cameras to cover all entrance and exit points to keep tabs on persons escorting students to and from schools.

Shahi said the new equipment would help check crime incidents, particularly those of abduction of students from the school campus. Shahi said: “Though the new mechanism will help curb the crime rate, there has been a decrease in the number of cases of abduction of students from the campus in the past six years.”

Shahi added that the effectiveness of the police infrastructure could be gauged from the fact that the police had rescuing a brother-sister duo within few hours of their abduction. Pratit Raj (6) and Pranati Raj (4), students of Christ Church Diocesan School, went missing around 11.30am on August 6 from the school premises. Muzaffarpur Government Railway Police recovered the duo with the help of locals.

Talking to mediapersons at his janata darbar, Shahi said it was a good initiative started by the police administration and the education department.

The minister also welcomed the decision of the Bihar School Examination Board (BSEB) to introduce semester system in Class X from the next academic session. According to the BSEB directives, the new board examination will be based on objective type test in which students will mark their answer on optical mark recognition (OMR) sheets.

Meanwhile, there was tension among applicants about Shahi’s janata darbar, as the minister used to hold his janata darbar at the HRD conference hall earlier but today, he chose to hold the darbar in his official chamber. Applicants were seen waiting outside Shahi’s chamber.

However, Shahi said he chose to hold the darbar at his chamber, as there were not many applicants today and the applicants mainly comprised people who had come for the librarians’ posts. Earlier, Shahi had to face the ire of applicants for the post of librarians as a youth who had come to the minister’s janata darbar threatened to immolate himself in front of the secretariat if the minister failed to give him an assurance to his grievance.

The applicants had come with a plea stating that the government has stopped the appointment process of librarians in various state libraries, thus jeopardising the future of thousands of students.

At the chief minister’s janata darbar too, these applicants approached Nitish Kumar with the same plea and were later assured by Shahi to file an affidavit in the case.