Cong student wing NSUI moves court over glitches in CBSE's OSM, seeks probe into system

THe subject Students' unification of bharat (NSUI) has approached the new delhi heights Court regarding concerns over alleged irregularities in the Central Board of Secondary Education's newly-introduced On-Screen Marking (OSM) system for Class XII board examinations.In its public interest litigation (PIL) filed before the court, the Congress win has sought a reopening of the verification process, manual checking of answer sheets in disputed cases and an independent inquiry into the digital evaluation, ANI news agency reported.CBSE had introduced the OSM at scale for Class 12 board examinations this year, replacing the manual examination of physical answer sheets with a system wherein scanned copies are evaluated on the screen. This does away with the posting of answer copies to examiners, with these just being uploaded to be evaluated digitally.Also Read | 3 teens vs CBSE: How the Class 12 paper-checking system OSM blew up, and the board corrected, defended, counteredHowever, following the Class 12 results this year, the Board's pass percentage fell to a seven-year low, with students reporting missing pages from their answer sheets, blurred scans and answers being left unmarked. In some cases, the answer sheets were reportedly not even theirs.The NSUI had also staged a protest over the issue outside the CBSE headquarters in east Delhi's Patparganj last week.What does the NSUI petition state?The NSUI in its plea stated that it had filed the petition on behalf of lakhs of students who had appeared for the Class 12 CBSE examinations, saying thousands had faced difficulties after the declaration of results.The plea cited issues raised by students including incomplete uploads, mismatch of answer booklets, blurred answer sheets, missing pages and unexpectedly low marks, according to ANI. It also highlighted problems in accessing the re-evaluation and verification portal.Also Read | ‘Blind checking’, series of technical issues: Red flags CBSE ‘ignored’ before OSM rolloutReferring to CBSE's acknowledgment of technical glitches in the portal used for obtaining scanned copies and the extension of re-evaluation deadlines multiples times, the petition argued that the Class 12 Board results are key to students applying for college admissions. It contended that these also play a role in scholarships and future educational opportunities, and thus carrying serious consequences for the students' academic pursuits.It highlighted that at least 1.27 lakh applications regarding nearly 3.87 lakh answer books had been submitted by students seeking scanned copies of their evaluated answer sheets, ANI reported. The petition, filed through Advocates Rishav Ranjan, Ajay Chhikara, Omar Hoda, Eesha Bakshi and Shubham Mishra, the plea requested the HC for directions to keep the verification and re-evaluation portal open for another month for affected students.The PIL alleged that students whose answer sheets had been correctly scanned and evaluated were being treated differently in comparison to those whose booklets had technical errors. It urged CBSE to frame and execute proper guidelines for such future digital evaluation systems, stating that students should not suffer because of errors in the system introduced by the authorities.