The Chairman of the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) Arvind Saxena yesterday (4 February) revealed the apex government recruitment agency’s plans to migrate to an online system of conducting examinations, reports Times Of India.

"The main objective of making the examinations online is to reduce the stress among students and the whole process candidate-friendly. The number of candidates appearing competitive examinations is increasing every day so there are some challenges in evaluation and value addition in the paper-based exams. We want to make things more transparent," said Saxena, who was in Bhubaneswar to attend a meeting of all the state public service commissions of the country.

At the two-day meet, a variety of examination-related issues were discussed with special emphasis on the creation of a standard operating procedure across the board.

"We discussed on technical, legal and statutory aspects of the examinations and how to make it candidate-friendly and work on developing a model guideline. By making the exam online the candidates would be able to see the answer sheets, if they have any doubt," stated chairman of Odisha Public Services Commission, Brigadier (Retd) Laxmi Charan Patnaik.

Members of the commissions in attendance also talked about digitally evaluating answer sheets and the prospective effects of moving from a ‘pen and paper’ model to a web-based one.