Patna, April 6: Contrasting statements on the same issue at the same venue brought out the difference between human resource development (HRD) department minister P.K. Shahi and its principal secretary Anjani Kumar Singh.

While Shahi said the services of candidates who have failed in both the teacher eligibility tests conducted in 2009 and 2011 would be terminated, HRD principal secretary, who was sitting adjacent to him, said the services of candidates will not be terminated but their appraisal will “definitely stop”.

The two were speaking at the announcement of the results of the teachers’ eligibility test conducted by the HRD department in February.

The number of candidates who have failed in both the examinations is 174. Those teachers who have a service record of more than three years were eligible for the test. A total of 1,11,612 candidates enrolled for the examination.

The pass percentage this year is 91.94, less than the results published for the examination conducted in 2009.

Earlier, before announcing the results, Shahi inaugurated a call centre and data centre, which have been set up under the department’s centralised monitoring and data centre (CMD) project.

In its effort to monitor and track the performance of various schemes and programmes in the education sector, the state HRD department has set up a call centre and data centre at HRD office.

The HRD department conceived the project, Shiksha Darpan.

Shahi after inaugurating the data and call centres said: “The use of information and communication technology will ensure timely availability of relevant information to not only the officials concerned but also to students, teachers and the common people.”

The state government hopes that with the inauguration of the call centre and the data centre several other flagship schemes of the education department will be covered.

The state HRD department call centre will be functional for the entire day and if anyone has any query, they can call up 18003456160 and get them addressed. Shahi also said the data centre has been set up with the state-of-the-art technology having large storage capacity and high-performance servers.

The data centre is designed to support operations 24x7 with a power supply back-up through 125KVA generators. Moreover, the 40-seat call centre is fully equipped with a modern and automatic interactive voice response system that will be able to handle queries in Hindi as well as English.