Amidst controversy regarding the sanctity of nation-wide entrance examinations, UPSC plans to tighten the security in the centres.
The Constitutional body, Union Public Service Commission or UPSC conducts 14 major examinations including the prestigious civil services test for selecting officers of the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), Indian Foreign Service (IFS), and Indian Police Service (IPS). In 2024, nearly 26 lakh candidates will be participating in this exam, which will be conducted in 80 centres across 28 States and 6 Union Territories. Due to rising cases of cheating in entrance examinations across India, UPSC plans to conduct these important examinations under highest level of surveillance.
For conducting a cheat-proof UPSC exam, the governing body has floated a tender invite bids from experienced public sector undertakings for technological solutions. Those technologies are “Aadhaar-based fingerprint authentication (else digital fingerprint capturing), facial recognition of candidates, QR code scanning of e-admit cards” along with “Live AI-based CCTV surveillance service” during the examination process.
Facial Recognition: “The UPSC attaches great importance to the conduct of its examinations in a free, fair, and impartial manner. In its endeavour to fulfil these objectives, the Commission intends to make use of the latest digital technology to match and cross-check the biometric details of the candidates and to monitor various activities of the candidates during the examination to prevent cheating, fraud, unfair means, and impersonation,” read the tender document.
The Commission said that “Facial recognition should be performed in a completely stateless transaction of two images -- one provided during the online registration and the other captured on the day of the exam.”
Real-time Monitoring: “Provision should be made for a real-time attendance monitoring system through a secured web server. The system should have provision for real-time monitoring of the enrolment activity along with GPS coordinates against every enrolment and time stamp to ensure that enrolment is done during the stipulated shift,” the tender document mentioned further.
AI-based Systems: Artificial Intelligence or AI-based CCTV surveillance systems will be implemented to stop cheating as well as impersonation in exam centre. It will monitor different activities of candidates and video record the whole process. This AI-system will raise red flags if it sense any suspicious activity like cheating, absence of invigilators, unusual movement of candidates or invigilator and so on.
The tender document clearly mentioned about the responsibilities of service provider: “The service provider has to install an adequate number of CCTV colour cameras in every classroom (minimum 1 CCTV camera for 24 candidates), entry/exit gate, and control room (where pre-examination sensitive material will be kept and opened and post-examination sensitive material will be packed) of every examination venue.”
The CCTV camera to candidate ratio should be less than 1:24 without any blind spots. So, if any exam room has more than 24 candidates, there should be more than one CCTV cameras.
In June 2024, examination governing body, National Testing Agency (NTA) got two back-to-back blows with the cheating incident in National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (Undergraduate) or NEET-UG, a medical entrance and UGC-NET or University Grants Commission-National Eligibility Test for eligibility of Indian nationals for Assistant Professor and Junior Research Fellowship (JRF). Currently, CBI is conducting investigation against this malpractice.
Gone are those days with old method of cheating with bluetooth headset or so. With advanced technologies, offenders are finding out new ways of cheating. Thus, technologies like artificial intelligence or AI can only be the solution.
The strict measurements are aimed to strengthen the overall examination process to eliminate the possibility of malpractice by the candidates or any other persons.
