BENGALURU: After being embroiled in paper leak controversies over the years, Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences (RGUHS) has devised a mechanism to break free of the infamy it has earned for itself.
For the first time in the university and perhaps the state, a centralised live surveillance system is put in place wherein the examination centres can be monitored at realtime from the headquarters, which is RGUHS where a control room is setup. Senior professors from various universities are designated as observers for three to four centres each.
The initiative which is in pilot project is “to ensure fair and transparent examination and reduce malpractices completely. For now, it is being implemented in the post graduate Medical and Dental examination of May 2019. RGUHS is the first university in the state to be implementing this project,” said vice chancellor of the institute Dr S Sacchidanand.
With the introduction of technology in monitoring, surveillance teams will have no place. Instead, just video surveillance will be implemented. The entire project is undertaken using university funds, added the VC, and is being implemented in the post graduate section which has lesser number of examinees.
If all works well, the university will implement the project for graduate level medical examinations of affiliated colleges. On the first day of implementation, on Wednesday, teething problems like poor internet connectivity was experienced in some of the centres.
“The onus of the connectivity lies on the individual institutes. However the video will be locally buffered for reviewing after the live streaming and the university gets the entire data via cloud, and it is encrypted, ” said Devineni Penchala Srinivas, Director, Orego Biz Solutions Pvt Ltd which is the firm looking after the webstreaming both before and after the examination.
High resolution cameras (720 P) are fitted in the examination halls , and for those with low internet connectivity, D1 resolution cameras are fitted.
This is one among the chain of attempts made by the institute to rein in on the paper leak by adopting technology. Medical Education Minister in 2011 had announced that the papers would be transmitted online for the paramedical and nursing courses theory examination.
Even so, recently, in 2018, the college was rocked with news about a potential leak , with copies of a question paper from the second year MBBS examination was circulated in social media just minutes after the examination had started.