Prayagraj: The Uttar Pradesh Secondary Education Board (UP Board) will introduce signal jammers for the first time during the high school and intermediate examinations beginning Feb 18 in a bid to strengthen examination security.In line with the state govt’s objective of conducting cheating-free examinations, the board will install jammers at 20 of the total 8,033 examination centres across the state on a pilot basis. The jammers will block mobile and internet signals, ensuring that question papers or other examination-related material cannot be shared outside the centres through social media. The identities of the selected centres, including some schools in Prayagraj, are being kept confidential. If the pilot project is successful, the use of jammers will be extended to more centres in future examinations, particularly those classified as sensitive and highly sensitive. The decision mirrors practices followed by national examination bodies. The Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) deploys jammers at centres for all its examinations, including the Civil Services Examination while the Staff Selection Commission (SSC) also uses jammers in its computer-based examinations. The board also announced that from the 2026 examinations onwards, reserved sets of question papers for all subjects will be made available at every district and examination centre. Previously, reserved sets were arranged only for main subjects, but the coverage is now expanded to include all subjects to better manage contingencies. UP Board examinations will be held from Feb 18 to March 12 in 2 shifts daily. Both high school and intermediate examinations are scheduled to be completed within 15 working days, and the results are expected to be declared in the last week of April. In view of the examinations, the secondary education department has requested the state govt to exempt its officers and staff, as far as possible, from duties related to the Special Intensive Revision of the voter list during the examination period. Over the years, the board has introduced several measures to curb malpractice, including 4-layer packaging of question papers since 2023, centre-wise coding of question papers from 2025, round-the-clock monitoring through command and control centres at the headquarters and 5 regional offices since 2024, the use of stitched answer sheets across all districts from 2023, and numbered, 4-colour answer sheets in use since 2020.
