Principals and representatives of 300 government and government-aided schools in Ranchi affiliated with Jharkhand Academic Council (JAC) were on Thursday trained to register candidates for Class X and XII boards online, a process that will debut from this year for the 2018 exams.

The move marks the end of manual registration process in vogue so far, which leaves room for fake and multiple identities of board examinees.

The principals and school authorities assembled at Bariatu Girls High School to learn how to register candidates online with unique user IDs and passwords that JAC has generated for each school. This ID and password will be fed to the servers of the school concerned and the academic council.

Ranchi district education officer (DEO) Ratan Kumar Mahavar said the online system would bring in more transparency to state board exams and make registration easy for schools and students.

"From this year, registration won't happen manually," said Mahavar. "Last week, JAC held a meeting-cum-training session on its Namkum campus for all DEOs of the state in the first phase. Under the second phase, we are training principals on online registration. It is simple. Using the unique id and password, each school can log in on the JAC website to register candidates appearing in Class X or XII boards next year," he added.

He said that in the past, manual registrations helped some candidates create fake and multiple identities with proxies answering exams. "With online registration, all this will stop," he said.

He added manual registration was tedious for both schools and their students. In Ranchi, most school authorities had to come to the Namkum office (JAC headquarters) to manually submit documents. In cases of rectification, again, one had to come to Namkum.

Lack of net connectivity and computers at schools could pose a problem initially, he said. "But, under the school modernisation scheme, computers are being provided by the state government, so things will improve. Those who don't have access to school computers can go to the nearest cyber café."

Divya Singh, principal of Balkrishna Plus Two High School in Upper Bazaar, hailed the step. "Now, once a student is registered, s/he can't attempt a second registration as his/ her records would be fed at the central server that can be accessed by JAC or school," she said.