The Assam Higher Secondary Education Council has decided to install jammers at “sensitive” higher secondary examination centres in the state from next year to prevent students from cheating using mobile phones and other such devices.

Council secretary Kamaljyoti Gogoi on Thursday said use of cellphones by students for cheating during exams had become a major cause of concern and to curb this trend, the council has decided to install mobile phone jammers at “sensitive” examination centres or centre from where complaints of rampant cheating have been received.

With advances in technology, a section of unscrupulous students have gone high-tech, using cellphones, wireless earpieces and bluetooth devices to get answers. Jammers were first used in 2015 during tests for admissions to country’s top medical and engineering colleges.

Speaking at the 47th annual conference of the Council of Boards of School Education in India (CoBSE), which began here on Thursday, Gogoi also expressed concern over the casual approach of a section of teachers in evaluation of answer scripts. He also rued that many teachers were not maintaining integrity during invigilation.

The theme of the three-day conference is Integrity in Conduct of Examinations.

The chairman of the Board of Secondary Education, Assam, (Seba) R.C. Jain, said they also have plans to install jammers in examination centres but it will take some time as they want to install jammers in all their 857 examination centres.

Seba conducts the matriculation examination in the state.

“We do not want to install jammers only at a few selected examination centres as it would amount to discrimination among examinees of different centres,” he added.

“Leakage of question papers and casual approach of some evaluators during evaluation of answer scripts and tabulation of marks are some of the major challenges before us,” said Jain, hoping that the conference would deliberate upon how to overcome these challenges to achieve an error-free examination system.

Inaugurating the conference, Assam chief minister Sarbananda Sonowal hoped that the conference would produce innovative ideas to guide the Indian education system.

During the conference, representatives of school examination boards from across the country and Nepal and Bhutan will be discussing strategies to ensure fair examinations.

“We hope that the deliberations in the convention on Integrity in Conduct of Examinations will conclude on a positive, meaningful and decisive note,” said council chairman Dayananda Borgohain.

CoBSE president Asano Sekhose and its general secretary Pran Chand are also attending the conference.