90% candidates appear for BEd-JEE; AI monitoring ensured transparency, says minister

Lucknow: Around 90% of the 4.4 lakh candidates who registered for the Joint Entrance Examination for admission to Bachelor of Education (BEd-JEE) courses appeared for the exam held at 1,011 centres across 72 districts in two shifts on Sunday.

Conducted by Bundelkhand University, Jhansi, the entrance examination saw 2.7 lakh female and 1.7 lakh male candidates register for the test. The general knowledge and language paper was held in the first shift, while the aptitude test and subject competence examination were conducted in the second shift.

Districts such as Kasganj and Pilibhit recorded the highest attendance, with 95% of candidates appearing for the exam, while Ghaziabad and Gautam Budh Nagar recorded the lowest attendance at 84%.

According to higher education minister Yogendra Upadhyaya, an advanced integrated command and control centre (ICCC) was established at Bundelkhand University to monitor the examination, with live surveillance of all centres.

For this, approximately 22,000 CCTV cameras and 5,651 biometric machines were installed. During the examination, AI-based facial recognition technology, fingerprint-based biometric verification and a real-time attendance system were used to ensure that only genuine candidates appeared for the test.

Upadhyaya said that the modern AI-enabled system continuously monitored strong rooms, entry and exit gates, and examination halls. He added that, for the first time, university representatives were provided with GPS-enabled body-worn cameras to strengthen the integrity and transparency of the examination.

“Through these cameras, the live location of representatives, inspections of examination centres, and activities related to confidential material were monitored from the control room,” he said.

All examination centres were connected through a VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol)-based communication system. “Through this, secure and quick communication was established between the organising university and the examination centres,” he said.