New Delhi: The Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) has successfully implemented facial recognition technology in the Civil Services Preliminary Examination to prevent impersonation, according to officials.
The Civil Services Examination, conducted annually for key central services including the IAS, IPS and IFS, is held in three stages—prelims, mains and interview.
This year’s preliminary exam was held on May 24 across 2,072 centres nationwide. UPSC said 8.19 lakh candidates had applied, and 5.49 lakh candidates appeared for the test.
The move follows instances of impersonation reported in earlier years. To eliminate such malpractice, UPSC introduced a facial verification check during the recent prelims.
A mobile application for the process was developed with technical support from the National e-Governance Division under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology. Invigilators used the app on Android phones to match the candidate’s face with the photograph uploaded during application, with each verification taking only a few seconds, UPSC said.
