Amid reports of misappropriation in allocation of tab money for higher secondary students, an organisation of school heads of West Bengal on Saturday asked the school education department to minimise the possibility of hacking the Banglar Siksha portal, which facilitates the transfer of Rs 10,000 to every student’s bank account to buy digital tools for e-learning.

In a letter to the department's principal secretary, the Advanced Society for Headmasters and Headmistresses said, "The Banglar Siksha portal’s vulnerability to hacking is posing a significant risk to sensitive information of teaching and non-teaching staff, students, and parents," and emphasised that strengthening the server is crucial.

Chandan Maity, general secretary of the society, explained that the portal frequently takes hours to upload content on mobile devices and laptops during evening hours, "which leads to the possibility of hacking of the bank accounts." Reports surfaced in October revealing that around 1,900 bona fide students out of 16 lakh students did not receive the Rs 10,000 allocated by the state government for their accounts, triggering an outcry.

Earlier, a senior police official had said a nexus, operating across states including Jharkhand, was behind siphoning the money from various social welfare schemes.

The districts where such cases were reported include Malda, Murshidabad, North 24 Parganas, Cooch Behar, Bankura, and Jalpaiguri.

"The portal is open in the evening hours when the buffering continues indefinitely and it takes a long time for the data to load. There is a possibility of the data being hacked during that period of loading," Maity said.

"Hence, we call for strengthening the Banglar Siksha server, implementing robust encryption and firewall systems, conducting regular security audits, and issuing immediate alert notifications to affected individuals in case of a breach," he added.

Maity also suggested that the Banglar Siksha portal be OTP-based, with a message notification being sent to the school concerned whenever anyone from the school education headquarters at Bikash Bhavan or the district inspector of schools logs into the respective school’s page.

The state government announced that deprived students will receive the money again, and over 100 of them have already been compensated. The process of sending funds to the remaining students is currently underway.

At least 15 arrests have been made in connection with the siphoning of money allocated for the tablets since early November.

Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by The Telegraph Online staff and has been published from a syndicated feed.