Over five lakh candidates, the majority of them girls, will appear in the West Bengal Higher Secondary examinations which will begin on March 3, an official said.

Last year 7,90,000 candidates wrote their papers for the class 12 examinations but this year 5.09 lakh candidates will appear in the examinations, West Bengal Council of Higher Secondary Education, president Chiranjib Bhattacharjee told reporters on Wednesday.

Of the total candidates 5.09 lakh candidates to appear in the higher secondary examination, 2.77 lakh are girls, he said.

Candidates will write papers in 2,089 examination centres fitted with CCTV cameras to prevent any unfair practice during exams.

There will be special security features and specific QR codes and bar codes on the question paper-answer sheet to detect any attempt to film and circulate images and track the wrongdoer at the outset.

The examinations will begin at 10 am and conclude at 1:15 pm.

New subjects like Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Data Science will be among the 62 subjects in this year’s higher secondary examinations.

The higher secondary examinations will end on March 18.