The Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) successfully implemented real-time face authentication across all examination venues during the Civil Services and Indian Forest Service (Preliminary) Examination, 2026, held on May 24, a government statement said on Thursday, adding that the move was aimed at preventing impersonation and strengthening the integrity of the examination process. UPSC implements face authentication for prelims examAccording to the commission, the face-authentication protocol ensured that the candidate who uploaded a photograph while submitting the application was the same person appearing for the examination with the admit card. The system enabled live verification of nearly 550,000 candidates across more than 2,072 examination venues through a mobile-phone-based application simultaneously used by more than 7,000 invigilators during this year’s Civil Services (Preliminary) Examination on May 24. UPSC said the application authenticated candidates within 6-8 seconds on average, processing around 12,000 authentications every minute, and prevented queues at examination centres.The Commission developed and implemented the application with technical support from the National e-Governance Division (NeGD) under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY). UPSC Chairman Ajay Kumar said the initiative aimed at ensuring impersonation-free examinations. “The technology is fully developed in-house with the help of NeGD. However, the challenge also lay in deploying the solution at scale, leveraging the existing invigilation workforce for face authentication, training them, and accomplishing all this within a short span of time,” he said.UPSC also developed a detailed standard operating procedure (SOP) for the exercise, which it shared with states, districts and examination venues. Multiple rounds of training were subsequently conducted for invigilators.The Commission said the system does not require any specialised hardware and can operate on any Android smartphone. Invigilators used their own mobile phones for the authentication process, reducing hardware costs and easing logistical requirements.The UPSC Civil Services exam is one of the most competitive exams in the country, attracting thousands of applicants every year. Last year, 937,876 candidates applied for this examination, of which 576,793 actually appeared on May 25, 2025. A total of 14,161 candidates qualified for the Written (Main) Examination, and 2,736 of those qualified for the Personality Test. Finally, only 958 candidates were selected for appointment to different services.