The Railway Recruitment Board (RRB) is rolling out advanced anti-fraud measures, which include compulsory face recognition and widespread mobile jammer deployment across all its exam centres in India.
An official statement said this significant move aims to uphold integrity and ensure fairness by achieving a “zero cheating cases” record in the upcoming June 2025 RRB exams.
What does the process look like?
The target will be achieved through a sophisticated Aadhar e-KYC-based photo validation system. This technology will enable real-time face matching during the registration process on exam day.
The photographs fetched directly from the candidate’s Aadhar e-KYC will be matched with the images captured during the initial application submission and again at the exam centre registration by the concerned authorities.
This multi-layered verification aims to add an extra “post-exam scrutiny” layer, making impersonation virtually impossible.
Zero tolerance for electronic malpractice
To complement the biometric security, the RRB is also set to implement 100 per cent mobile jammer deployment across 7000 exam exam centers throughout the country.
This provision is designed to completely eliminate any attempts of cheating through electronic devices such as mobile phones, which has posed a massive challenge in conducting large-scale examinations.
The jamming strategy signals a firm commitment to create a fair testing environment where only merit will be considered to select the deserving candidates.
This process, along with a set of other reforms released by the center will mark a new era in Railway recruitment, which will be transparent, tech-driven, inclusive, and time-bound, as envisioned by the technocrat Minister Shri Ashwini Vaishnaw, according to the statement.
Cheating in railway recruitments
This reform was rolled out four months after the Railway Ministry decided to hand over the responsibility of conducting exams to the RRB. This followed the CBI’s arrest of 26 railway officials in Uttar Pradesh’s Mughal Sarai for allegedly leaking exam papers.
Until then, the zonal and divisional railway offices conducted these exams independently, but reports of corruption and cheating were increasing.
The Railway Board, after a high-level meeting, announced that all future promotion exams would be conducted through a computer-based test (CBT)