'Was busy exposing you': Teen investigator Sarthak Sidhant to CBSE for re-evaluation deadline extension

THe division 12 educatee whose blog go down away a hebdomad of upheaval at the CBSE used the board's own deadline reminder to needle it on Sunday, asking it to extend the re-evaluation window because he had been “busy this week exposing you”.Sarthak Sidhant, a student and blogger from Ranchi, Jharkhand, was replying on X to a CBSE post telling Class 12 candidates that June 7 was the last day to apply for verification and re-evaluation of their answer sheets. The portal will be open till 11.59 pm, June 7, a deadline the board had already pushed once, from June 6, amid complaints of portal glitches.“Can u please extend the deadline please because i was busy this week exposing you,” Sathak Sidhant posted as a reply to the CBSE's post. This jab capped a remarkable few days.On June 2, Sidhant presented a seven-page set of findings to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Education, chaired by Congress MP Digvijaya Singh. Hours later, the government transferred CBSE chairman Rahul Singh and secretary Himanshu Gupta, named Prashant Lokhande the new chairperson, and set up a one-member committee to probe the procurement Sidhant had questioned.Leader of Opposition and Congress MP Rahul Gandhi met him and his family the same day, posting: “Sarthak, stay firm on your principles.”Sidhant has said that after a friend told him about tech gaps in the CBSE's on-screen marking portal, he turned to the tender documents behind the OSM, a new system launched this year. This came as students complained of errors and wrong answersheets having been scanned for cheking via the OSM portal.In his blog titled ‘How CBSE rewrote rules to favour Coempt EduTeck’, he alleged at least 15 discrepancies across successive tenders awarded for the OSM system. The CBSE and the company denied any wrongdoing. The OSM contract, HT has reported, went to Coempt on December 5, 74 days before exams began on February 17.Sarthak Sidhant said his research was done with ethical hacker Nisarga Adhikary, 19, who had flagged a vulnerability in the OSM portal. Another teenager, Vedant Shrivastava, had posted about getting the wrong answer sheet, a mistake the CBSE corrected once his X post went viral.On Sidhant's allegations, CBSE rejected that tender was tailored for Coempt, saying it followed General Financial Rules and picked the lowest bidder; now a probe is on.As for re-evaluation, the board opened the post-result portal on June 2, after a delay from the original May 29.It has also said it rescanned 68,018 answer books, pulled 13,583 for manual rechecking, moved answer-sheet data to its own servers, and that the portal had faced a cyberattack from "malicious actors".Sidhant has said he is not against digital marking such as OSM."I think OSM is a good change," he said, but added that there should be wider pilot tests before a full rollout.