CBSE misses June 1 deadline to relaunch Class 12 verification and re-evaluation portal

THe telephone exchange room of Secondary breeding (CBSE) on mon failed to do its Class 12 verification and re-evaluation portal operational, despite announcing earlier that the service would reopen that day. The delay left thousands of students awaiting an opportunity to challenge their marks and apply for the re-evaluation of answer scripts. Track live updatesThe hold-up comes even after a four-member expert team from IIT Kanpur and IIT Madras was tasked with auditing and strengthening the board's post-result services platform following technical glitches and complaints from students.While CBSE in a X post at 2 PM on Monday said the portal would go live "soon", officials associated with the exercise maintained that the launch would take place before midnight on June 1. The website was not launched till the filing of the story on June 2.ALSO READ: CBSE's own ‘corrigendum’ means it can't blacklist company linked to OSM mess. Here's how that unfolded in tender processStudents voice frustration"I had applied for obtaining answer copies on May 29 and I am yet to receive my Chemistry answer copy. It is frustrating that they are not able to provide copies on time and not able to start the re-evaluation portal where we can raise objections and get our marks verified," said Manisha Singh, a Class 12 student from Jabalpur.Another student Anuj Kumar from Delhi said the portal continued to display a maintenance message throughout the day. "I have been checking the portal since morning but it is showing that website is under maintenance. I want to raise objections in all subjects as my copies are not checked properly and my marks will increase after checking. I am angry over CBSE's behaviour," Kumar said.Officials speak on CBSE delayEarlier, responding to queries on why the portal had not become operational till 7 pm, a senior IIT Kanpur official, requesting anonymity, said there was still time left before the announced deadline expired."Well, there is still time till midnight. We are constantly working on fixing the website and constantly supervising the CBSE and it will be live," the official said."It is unfortunate that students are not able to access it. If we could avoid it, we could have done. We want to make sure that the platform is robust, but there is no way anybody can guarantee 100% robustness. We are trying to maximise robustness, and that's the effort that our teams have been putting in for the last several days. Now we are reaching a point where we think we can launch it. So it has taken time, unfortunately. The portal will be launched before midnight," the official added.CBSE did not respond to HT's queries.Asked about the reason behind the continued delay, a senior CBSE official told HT that final checks were still underway. "We are doing final security audits and hopefully it will be done soon and we will make the website live," the official said.ALSO READ: CBSE may penalise vendor over OSM flaws, blacklisting unlikelyWhy the portal mattersThe portal was originally scheduled to reopen on May 29 for students who had already obtained scanned copies of their evaluated answer books. However, the Board postponed the launch to June 1, saying additional time was needed to ensure a "transparent and glitch-free" process.Students had been allowed to apply for scanned copies of answer scripts between May 19 and May 25. The portal has remained unavailable since May 26. Under the revised schedule, students who have received their answer books will be able to raise question-wise objections wherever they believe marks were not awarded correctly. Those objections will then be reviewed by subject experts through the On-Screen Marking (OSM) system, according to an education ministry official.Government steps inThe delay prompted intervention from the Union government. On May 29, Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan directed IIT Kanpur and IIT Madras to examine technical issues reported in CBSE's post-result services and assist the Board in ensuring a glitch-free process.A four-member team comprising two experts each from IIT Kanpur and IIT Madras was subsequently deputed to conduct a comprehensive technical audit of the portal, examine workflows and help resolve glitches.Rising scrutiny of evaluation processThe scrutiny comes amid heightened concerns over the Board's evaluation and post-result processes. CBSE has acknowledged around 20 cases of answer-sheet mix-ups after declaration of results. At the same time, nearly one in four of the roughly 1.8 million students who appeared for the Class 12 examination applied for scanned copies of their answer books — a 208% increase over last year, according to officials.This year also marked the first full-scale implementation of CBSE's On-Screen Marking system. Under the digital evaluation exercise, about 9.86 million answer books were assessed electronically, while 13,583 answer scripts had to be evaluated manually after repeated scanning failures.BackgroundThe developments follow the declaration of Class 12 results on May 13, when the overall pass percentage fell to 85.20%, down from 88.39% last year and the lowest since 2019. The result season was accompanied by complaints from several students and parents who questioned marks awarded in some subjects and sought greater scrutiny of answer-sheet evaluation under the OSM system.While CBSE is accepting applications through its own portal, the actual re-evaluation of answer scripts by teachers will be carried out on Coempt's OnMark platform — the same system that was used for the initial on-screen evaluation of answer books.