So far, the board has been holding very few of its examinations online, which is set to change soon. A senior TRB official told DT Next that the board recently entered into an agreement with IIT-Madras and MIT. Under this, while online exams would be organised by a private firm, both IIT-M and MIT would ensure transparency in the whole process, the official said.

“Once the software for online exams is ready, a series of mock tests would be conducted under the supervision of these institutes. The software would also handle the processing of online applications, allocating exam centres and generating hall tickets to the candidates,” he said.

According to him, IIT-M and MIT would monitor the whole process and would offer advice on the necessary changes that have to be made in the procedure. “It was also planned to use Artificial Intelligence (AI) to detect and record face emotions, eye movements and all the activities of candidates during the exams,” he added.

The online exam software would ensure transparency in maintaining a permanent database of the candidates and their performance, which could be referred to at any point of time.

Also, there would be provision for the candidates to download and verify their performance in the examination. Strong cyber security provisions would be put in place to access the candidates’ database so that no one would be able to tamper it, he said.