School authorities have been asked to seize the gadgets from students who violate a year-old mobile phone ban on campuses and sell them at a public auction, a top official said Monday. Teachers are also banned from using mobile phones during the school working hours.

“The schools have been directed to form a powerful committee representing parents, staff and their management. They will ensure that the ban is strictly enforced and conduct the auctioning,” said Mohammed Haneesh, Director of Public Instructions.

Kerala has the deepest mobile phone penetration in India and 72 percent of its population owns a mobile number if the number of connections issued by the service providers are to be considered.

According to the figures released by the Cellular Operators Association of India, the number of GSM connections issued by the operators barring Reliance Communications (which largely provides services on CDMA platform in Kerala) touched 18.19mn in April.

The state with a population of 31.84 million crossed the 20mn cell phone subscriber base last year and the companies are increasingly targeting schoolchildren to widen their market as competition stiffens.

But the authorities are worried about the increasing incidents of the youngsters misusing the gadgets in classrooms and falling prey to the “love traps” on the mobile phones. Last year, three Class 12 students committed suicide after an MMS clip showing them involved in intimate scenes started spreading on mobile phones.

The cyber cell of the Police have recently registered a number cases of threatening women with secretly shot or morphed obscene pictures, sending obscene messages and MMS and clicking photographs of women in public without their permission.

Earlier, a teenage girl student attempted suicide after she was stripped and searched by a woman teacher to recover a mobile phone, an allegation that the school authorities denied later. The search was carried out after a junior student complained to the headmistress that the girl was seen talking on the mobile phone in the school.

When contacted, principals of private schools said a ban on cell phones is already in force on their campuses and the new call from the DPI could mainly be meant for the government-run or aided schools.

However, a few parents suggested that the schools should ask the pupils to check in their mobile phones before the classes begin and check out when they return from the schools or install deploy cell phone jamming instruments instead of a total ban.

Meanwhile, Haneesh said arrangements had been in place to accord a grand welcome to some 400,000 students enrolled in the government schools this year. They will get a better midday meal besides an egg and a glass of milk.