A novel way to evade Delhi government's biometric attendance drive has emerged after inspections found water inside several biometric machines despite no nearby plumbing or other apparent source like water, raising suspicions that the devices may have been deliberately tampered with, The Indian Express reported.
The Social Welfare Department has now decided to place biometric attendance machines across its offices under CCTV surveillance after repeated complaints of malfunctioning devices, it added.
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The issue emerged after Chief Minister Rekha Gupta, during a surprise inspection of the State GST office in April, found several senior officials, including senior bureaucrats, absent from duty.
The government subsequently made biometric attendance mandatory across departments, including for additional chief secretaries, principal secretaries, secretaries and heads of departments.
Under the system, officials and staff are required to mark attendance at 9.30 am and leave at 6 pm, with disciplinary action threatened for late arrival, failure to record attendance or leaving early.
According to minutes of a recent departmental meeting, officials from several district offices and institutions had repeatedly complained that biometric devices were malfunctioning.
Inspections by service engineers reportedly found water in multiple machines.
The findings prompted the department to suspect that some devices may have been deliberately damaged.
An official cited in the report said the problem had occurred across several offices, raising questions over whether water had been deliberately poured or sprinkled into the machines to disrupt attendance recording.
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The government is also examining a separate challenge: many Social Welfare, Labour and Women and Child Development officials perform field duties and may not always be able to record attendance at office-based biometric machines.
The department is therefore considering a mobile-based Aadhaar-enabled biometric attendance system integrated with Face RD and real-time geolocation for field staff.
Its IT branch has been asked to assess the technical feasibility, said the report.
The move comes amid tighter scrutiny of attendance, with departments required to submit daily reports and the General Administration Department tasked with compiling attendance data for the Chief Secretary.
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