UP Board exam app to suss out impersonators marred by glitches

The UP Board’s ambitious plan to use technology to check impersonators was marred by glitches on the first day on the exam here on Thursday.

At most of the exam centres, the SIM cards issued by Madhyamik Shiksha Parishad (UP Board) to enable scanning of bar codes on the admit cards could not be activated.

At places where the SIM cards were activated, they failed to register the bar codes. As a result, the scanning had to be done manually.

District Inspector of Schools Lucknow, Umesh Tripathi, admitted the failure of the mobile application on the first day of examination.

He said, “The app failed to serve the purpose on the first day of examination. We have informed the board about it and are waiting for further instructions.”

Tripathi said that the trial run of the mobile application could not be done because as per the board’s directives, the SIM cards could not be activated before February 18—the first day of the examination.

Calling it a failure due to lack of proper planning RP Singh, state secretary UP Madhyamik Shikshak Sangh said, “The SIM cards had 2G connectivity and thus did not work. At several centres where the teachers tried to use their own 3G internet, the SIM cards failed to register the application that was supposed to be used for scanning the admit cards.”

As per the plan, all students appearing in the UP board examinations were given a smart admit card that had a bar code along with the details of students including their name, photo, address, school’s name etc.

Over 68 lakh students were registered for the examinations across the state out of 37,49,977 appeared for the high school exam and 30,71892 for Class 12 exams.

Besides, a total of 126 high school and 153 intermediate candidates appeared for the examination across eight jails in Firozabad, Ghaziabad, Bareilly, Banda, Gorakhpur, Fatehgarh, Varanasi and Lucknow.

To ensure free and fair exams, the administration has deployed police force, flying squads and also installed CCTVs at exam centres.

District magistrate Raj Shekhar has asked the DIOS to save the CCTV footage of all centres. He also said an FIR will be registered against examinees if they are caught cheating and the school will be black listed. Schools that do not ensure that the CCTVs are working properly will also be blacklisted for next year, he added.