Facial recognition to tackle impersonation in RGUHS exams

Students enrolling from 2020-21 will have to sign up for this feature

March 02, 2020 10:01 pm | Updated 10:01 pm IST

To avoid impersonation in examinations, the Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences (RGUHS) will soon capture the facial features of students on camera.

Vice chancellor S. Sachidananda said that this was a precautionary measure that they had initiated to avoid malpractices. He said that all the students who will enrol at the university from 2020-21 onwards will have to sign up for this. The software will be installed at all centres where the annual and the supplementary examinations will be held. The university recently started live streaming of its examination centres to curb malpractices.

Dr. Sachidananda said that the university has around 2.5 lakh students for MBBS, BDS, alternative medicine and allied health science courses. Examinations are conducted in around 230 centres.

The vice chancellor said that while all examination centres have cameras, the software needs to be downloaded. The university is yet to float tenders for the project.

University authorities said that the move would help them to a great extent. “Although the photo of the student is printed on the hall ticket, students change their hair style and sometimes look different from the photo they have pasted on the admission ticket. This makes it difficult for us to verify if the candidate is the same person as the one in the photo,” said an official.

Some students, however, are wary of the move. “Capturing our facial features is an invasion of privacy. We also fear that the university may not be able to protect our data in a secure manner,” said a third year MBBS student of a city-based medical college.

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