Cuttack, Jan. 9: The Board of Secondary Education has decided to undertake special measures, so that the matriculation examination starting from February 23 can be conducted smoothly.

Board officials are now planning to deploy observers in all the 2,799 examination centres across the state to put a check on malpractices.

As many as 5,92,281 students, including 5,78,244 regular, 9,620 ex-regular and 4,417 madhyama students, have enrolled for the high school certificate examination.

At every centre, the board will deploy one observer, who will remain present throughout the examination.

Elaborate arrangements have been made for smooth conduct of the tests and to ensure security of the question papers, the optical mark recognition (OMR) sheets and the answer booklets.

All the confidential documents will be kept in 302 nodal centres, and the question papers will be dispatched to the examination centre a day before the start of the examination.

'We are taking every possible measures to ensure a smooth examination. The answer sheets will be taken to the nodal centres after the exams in three subjects are over. This will facilitate early beginning of the evaluation process, which is likely to start on March 16,' said board president D.P. Nanda.

Special arrangements have been made for the security of the question papers in the Maoist-affected districts, where the confidential materials will be kept in 22 police stations, Nanda said.

A high-level meeting was also held recently at the secretariat in Bhubaneswar, where the issue of the question papers' security was discussed.

The question papers as well as the answer booklets will be kept at the nodal centre amid tight security, and police personnel will guard the rooms round the clock.

Steps are also being taken to identify centres located in sensitive and hyper-sensitive areas, and a provision is being made to record the entire examination proceeding at such centres.

Officials of the board also implemented a change in the roll number pattern for the first time.

An eight-digit number will be used in which first three digits will define the school code, the next two digits (alphabetical code) will represent the district and the remaining three digits will be the roll number of the student.