A teen whistleblower, portal chaos, cyberattacks and a leadership shake-up: How CBSE's OSM row snowballed

THe exchange room of Secondary breeding (CBSE) on tues launched its long-awaited portal for division 12 students seeking verification of answer sheets and re-evaluation of marks. The rollout was marred by technical glitches, cyberattack claims and ultimately an administrative upheaval.The portal, which opened a day later than scheduled, allows students to seek verification of issues identified in scanned copies of answer books supplied by the Board and apply for re-evaluation of answers. The application window will remain open until midnight on June 6.ALSO READ | CBSE chairman, secretary transferred in government action amid OSM rowLeadership shake-up amid OSM scrutinyCBSE Chairman Rahul Singh and Secretary Himanshu Gupta were transferred out of the Board on Tuesday. Prashant Lokhande was appointed the new CBSE Chairman. The abrupt reassignments come amid intense government scrutiny over the procurement process for the Board’s On-Screen Marking (OSM) system. It is the digital platform deployed for the full-scale assessment of Class 12 answer scripts.The Union education ministry has since ordered an intensive inquiry into the contract awarded to Hyderabad-based Coempt EduTeck and demanded a detailed report from the Board.“The ministry will take strong action against officials if any wrongdoing is established,” an official said, as reported by HT earlier. They added that “accountability will be fixed at multiple levels if procedural lapses or negligence are established in the tendering process.”ALSO READ | Govt seeks detailed report from CBSE on OSM tender amid row over Class 12 evaluationThe contract was awarded to Coempt EduTeck on December 5 last year (74 days before the board examinations began on February 17) reportedly after the company undercut tech giant TCS by 60%.CBSE officials have maintained that the tender process adhered strictly to General Financial Rules (GFR) and government procurement guidelines.A 17-year-old whistleblowerOn Tuesday, a 17-year-old student appeared before the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Education, Women, Children, Youth, and Sports. Sarthak Sidhant independently parsed public tender documents on the Central Public Procurement portal and published his explosive findings on his blog.The teen alleged that the Board systematically "rewrote rules" across three tender rounds to favour Coempt EduTeck, which formerly operated under the name Globarena.“There were at least 15 discrepancies, as per my blog. I would like to highlight three or four of them. Let me give a background about Coempt. It was known as Globarena, and they have a very shady background. 23 students killed themselves because of coempt," Sidhant told news agency ANI.“The first discrepancy is that there were three clauses of ‘poor performance’ which were completely wiped out from the new RFP. In the earlier RFP, there was a clause called ‘blacklisted earlier’ whereas in the new RFP, it was changed to ‘blacklisted currently’. Why would the board want a service provider which was blacklisted earlier?”A separate Hindustan Times investigation also found technical changes made between successive tender rounds.ALSO READ | CBSE ‘tender investigator’ Sarthak Sidhant's big day in Delhi: Two meetings, and a govt move spurred by his blogThe Parliamentary Standing Committee subsequently reviewed concerns surrounding the OSM system and heard submissions from CBSE and Education Ministry officials. While the panel cannot directly penalise officials, it can seek records, summon individuals and recommend action.Following the meeting, Congress MP Digvijaya Singh, who chairs the committee, said the panel would now await CBSE's response to the issues raised.Rahul Gandhi backs student whistleblowerLeader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, backed Sidhant’s findings.“[Sidhant] has revealed the hollowness of (education minister) Dharmendra Pradhan ji’s denials. The PM remains silent, as usual. The question is simple: who are they protecting, and why? An independent judicial inquiry is now essential to uncover the full extent of this scam,” Gandhi wrote on X. Portal struggles on opening dayStudents attempting to access the portal reported a range of technical difficulties shortly after it went live.Many said they encountered repeated authentication failures despite entering correct credentials, receiving messages saying, “Verification failed, please check details.” Others reported that the website froze after subject selection or redirected them to blank screens, forcing them to restart the process.Students using mobile devices also complained of interface issues, including overlapping text and buttons that could not be clicked.CBSE claims cyberattacksAmid complaints about disruptions, CBSE claimed the portal had been targeted by cyberattacks. "While thousands of students accessed the CBSE re-evaluation portal today, malicious actors attempted to disrupt services through a barrage of cyberattacks," the Board said.According to CBSE, "Most recent being a denial of service attack attempt causing 1.5 million hits on the portal within a matter of 2 minutes and more than 1 lakh attempts of unauthorised file access."CBSE shares portal updateLater, it released another update: "The portal is currently supporting nearly 14000 concurrent users, with over 28000 successful submissions as of 10 pm today. Based on student feedback, further improvements, including extended session time limits, have been implemented to enhance user experience. Our teams remain on constant watch to ensure a secure, reliable, and student-friendly platform."The Board said that no offline applications would be accepted and that requests submitted after the deadline would not be entertained. What students can apply forStudents can report issues in their scanned answer sheets, such as missing pages, supplementary sheets, maps or graphs, blurred pages, wrong answer books, or evaluation against an incorrect question paper set.They can also request re-evaluation of specific questions by providing the question and page numbers. CBSE is charging ₹100 per answer book for verification and ₹25 per question for re-evaluation. Once students click "Freeze" and proceed to payment, their application details cannot be changed.