Candidates appearing for engineering entrance exam JEE-Main will have to undergo frisking and biometric attendance after toilet breaks as well, according to National Testing Agency (NTA) officials.

Officials, observers, staff members and even helps serving refreshments will have to undergo the same process, they said.

"The move is aimed at ensuring there are no cases of use of unfair means or proxy attendance. We have strict mechanisms in place already but the idea is to make the exam completely foolproof to ensure there are zero incidents," NTA Director Subodh Kumar Singh said.

At present, aspirants are screened at the entry and biometric attendance is also recorded there.

"The same process will be extended to other exams as well in the longer run," Singh added.

The Joint Entrance Exam (JEE) Main is the screening test for admissions to centrally-funded technical institutions such as NITs and IIITs. The top 20 per cent of the merit list becomes eligible to sit for the JEE (Advanced), the entrance test for Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs).

The JEE (Main)-2024 will be conducted in 13 languages -- English, Hindi, Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Odia, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu, and Urdu.

The Computer Based Test (CBT) will be conducted from January 24 to February 1. The results will be announced on February 12.

The NTA has received record 12.3 lakh registrations for the exam this time. The second edition of the bi-annual exam will be conducted in April.

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