The nationwide controversy over the first-ever use of the On-Screen Marking (OSM) system for Class 12 by the Central Board of Secondary Education has been sparked not by political parties or street demonstrations, but by three teenagers – a student who was handed someone else’s answer sheet; another 17-year-old teenager who dissected the OSM contract; And a 19-year-old youth said that he had completely breached the web portal.
These three and X and many others like them on Instagram have forced CBSE to admit errors on some technical fronts, defend its system overall and categorically reject claims of corruption. Hyderabad-based Koempt Edutech, the company that runs the OSM platform, has also denied any wrongdoing.
Although the Congress-led opposition has taken issue with Prime Minister Narendra Modi questioning the BJP-led NDA regime, opposition leader Rahul Gandhi and others are emphasizing that these students belong to Gen-Z, the new generation at the center of major political changes in the Indian subcontinent.
sunday attack and defense
On Sunday, May 31, new developments were seen at both ends of the line.
Rahul Gandhi met Vedant Srivastava, the student who got the wrong answer sheet. He talked about the familiar insults being hurled at him, such as being called “anti-national” and “agents of the deep state” or Pakistanis. He also laughed at being called a “Soros agent” in reference to the Hungarian-American investor and philanthropist.george sorosWhom the Hindutva right accuses, among other things, of funding a “leftist agenda”.
Earlier he had shared A blog by 17 year old Sarthak SiddhantWhich investigated CBSE’s alleged “manipulation of its own selection process” in the OSM tender process. Gandhi wrote, “Sarthak’s work shows that India’s Gen Z is brilliant and fearless. And sooner or later they will know the whole truth.”
Third teen at center of controversy Nature Officer, 19, Which apparently got a response from CBSE – the board apparently did not name him – when it claimed that the OSM web portal, where teachers mark the scanned answer sheets, may have been breached.
The board posted on X on Sunday afternoon: “The identified vulnerabilities have been patched, and other exploitable vulnerabilities are being patched. We are grateful to all alert citizens and ethical hackers who pointed out such vulnerabilities, and have communicated directly with some of them.” He posted a meme saying that CBSE had “admitted” that there were flaws; And then he deleted that post. After this he told HT, “My work is complete.”
What shut it down?
osmIntroduced on a large scale for Class 12 this year, it replaced the system of posting physical answer sheets to examiners, with a more tech-centric system of evaluating scanned copies on a screen.
CBSE has maintained this system which improves transparency and reduces the overall errors.
But after the results were declared in mid-May 12th class passing percentage fell to a seven-year low, with students who applied revaluation They began reporting blurry scans, missing pages, unmarked answers and, in some cases, answer sheets that were not theirs.
CBSE issued a statement calling OSM “fair, transparent and equitable”. It reiterated that revaluation may be sought. Of the 98.6 lakh answer sheets evaluated, CBSE’s own data showed that 68,018 needed to be re-scanned due to poor image quality and 13,583 were manually checked after the scan failed.
mismatched answer sheet face
The first major human face of the OSM line is revealed Vedant Srivastava, A student based in Delhi. After unexpectedly getting low marks in Physics, he applied for photocopies of his answer sheets and found that the answer sheets shared with him by CBSE did not match his handwriting.
Her May 23 post on
CBSE responded directly to X saying that his concern has been investigated and the correct answer sheet has been sent to his email, in which his result will be updated.
Vedanta was trolled before that proposal. a national TV anchor For example, the “Pakistani” jibe went viral, although he later apologized. His brother Siddhant said the family had installed a new X handle only because they saw no clear way to report the problem.
The spy who scanned the tenders
meaningful theoryA 17-year-old student from Jharkhand was dissatisfied with his own results, and spent several days investigating the CBSE system. An online sleuth who runs a blog compared CBSE’s tender documents on the public procurement portal.
His blog, titled ‘How CBSE rewrote the rules in favor of Koempt Edutech’, alleged that the eligibility and technical bar was lowered in three tender rounds until the final winner qualified.
Read this also Gen-Z blog explodes: How 17-year-old Sarthak’s investigation into CBSE OSM tenders became the centerpiece of a major controversy
Interviewed from Ranchi, Siddhant said he had compared the old and new tender documents and counted “at least 15 discrepancies”.
According to him, the most poignant thing was that the condition barring companies from being “previously blacklisted” was changed to “currently blacklisted”. He argued that this change allowed the vendor Koempt Edutech, formerly known as Globarena Technologies, to also qualify, as it had reportedly faced blacklisting by some universities in Telangana at one time.
CBSE and the company rejected the suggestion that the rules were tilted towards any firm. As HT has also reported on the changesOfficials said the board followed procurement protocols and awarded the contract to the lowest qualified bidder under the quality-cum-cost framework. He said the amendment to the request for proposal (RFP) norms in tender rounds “should not be seen as a matter of haste, but as a process to address the shortcomings of the first round”.
Siddhant’s blog was highly appreciated by politicians from opposition parties. Rahul Gandhi shared this and called India’s Gen Z “brilliant and fearless”; Congress Committee chief Jairam Ramesh posted demanding resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan and a CBI inquiry; AAP supremo Arvind Kejriwal urged followers to read it.
The hacker who threatened and informed
An investigation also came in between nature officer, Who described himself as an amateur cyber security researcher and has also passed 12th class this year.
He said he found a master password in the frontend code of the portal that allows skipping the OTP step. This means that the OSM paper-checking portal dashboard can be opened directly, and he can change the marks. He told ht He had pointed out the shortcomings to the government in February also, but the shortcomings remained.
Here the response of CBSE changed rapidly. On May 26, the board rejected the claim and said that the website address (URL) it cited was only a test site with sample data. He said the operational assessment portal had a different address that was not compromised and no breach was revealed. In its clarification, the board made a typo error in the URL it posted and had to reissue it.
Five days later, when Vedanta and Siddhant’s virulence had also increased manifold, the board said the identified weaknesses had been “contained”. It said a cyber security team from the government and IITs has been deployed to strengthen the system.
protect the company
Coempt Edutech and its CEO, VSN Raju, called it an “absolutely false allegation” that the entire system was flawed, adding that the complaints were of “only one or two cases”.
In the Vedanta answer sheet glitch case, he blamed scanning error and not technology.
He denied any tender condition changes, and said the scanners were standard and the resolution was “perfect”.
On hacking, he reiterated CBSE’s stand that the server accessed was only for internal testing.
As far as the company’s past – it was earlier Globarena Technologies, which was linked to the 2019 Telangana board exam irregularities – Raju said the rebranding was not a secret and the courts had cleared the company in the Telangana case.
Politics, and the broader moment
The CBSE controversy became a time of crisis for the government examination machinery.
Education Minister Pradhan was already under criticism over the paper leak in the May 3 NEET-UG medical entrance examination. Then came the CBSE marking controversy and the CUET entrance exam on May 30 was also slightly delayed.
Pradhan has taken “full responsibility”, and has promised there will be no further problems with the exam systems.
On NEET, the biggest such exam in India and possibly the world, the government has told the Supreme Court that PM Modi is “personally monitoring” the re-examination to be held on June 21.
CBSE has said that no payment has been issued to Koempt yet, and the penalty will be reviewed after revaluation and supplementary examinations. Its revaluation portal is scheduled to open on June 1; That too Delayed from May 29.
CBSE said in this regard, “In order to ensure a transparent and glitch-free process for verification and revaluation of answer sheets of students who intend to submit their applications on the post-result activities portal, it has been decided that the designated portal will now become operational from June 1, 2026. This is to ensure the highest standards and protocols of evaluation.”
