Rahul Gandhi flags 'phone-scanned' answer sheets amid CBSE-OSM tender row
What's the story
Congress MP Rahul Gandhi has intensified his attack on the government and the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) over alleged corruption in the tender process for Class-12's on-screen marking (OSM) system. The attack came after student researcher Sarthak Sidhant alleged that answer sheets were scanned using phones instead of professional equipment. In an X post, Gandhi accused CBSE of diluting key technical requirements during the tender process to suit COEMPT Edu Teck, the vendor responsible for digitizing answer books.
Tender manipulation
'Every student affected by evaluation errors a victim of fraud'
Gandhi alleged that the CBSE diluted requirements to favor a specific firm, making it complicit in the alleged misconduct. He claimed that every student affected by evaluation errors was a victim of fraud. "'Scanners' became generic. Resolution dropped to 200 DPI," he wrote, adding that COEMPT scanned answer sheets using mobile phones. The blurred copies, missing pages, and unscanned books are not "errors" but predictable outcomes of a contract written to fit a vendor, he said.
Government accountability
PM silent on issue affecting 18.5L students: Gandhi
He said CBSE's May 2025 tender required answer sheets to be scanned with automatic robotic scanners, spines preserved, at a minimum of 300 DPI but the tender re-issued in August "quietly removed all of it." Gandhi also slammed Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his silence on the issue affecting 18.5 lakh students. He reiterated demands for Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan to resign.
Student
Adhikary shared screenshots of scanned answer booklets
The allegations intensified last week after student hacker Nisarga Adhikary revealed vulnerabilities in the OSM portal. Adhikary shared screenshots of scanned answer booklets and claimed security safeguards could be bypassed, giving "anyone on the internet" access to download answer-sheet scans. Examining the images shared online, Sidhant said he found drop shadows and fold marks on scanned answer sheets, suggesting they were captured using mobile devices. He questioned the CBSE's use of scanners given these anomalies.
Tender scrutiny
Credibility crisis for CBSE
"Do you mind explaining which copies when scanned through a scanner, have a drop shadow? And these 3 folds? Did you really use scanners?" Sidhant wrote on X. The OSM system was intended to revolutionize evaluation by making it faster and more transparent. However, it has led to a credibility crisis for the CBSE as students reported issues like blurred scans, missing pages, unchecked responses, and inexplicably low scores in subjects like Physics and Chemistry.
System flaws
CBSE to penalize vendor
The CBSE has said it will impose penalties on its OSM service provider, Coempt Edu Teck, officials said. The CBSE confirmed that it was "closely monitoring the vulnerabilities in the OnMark portal of our service provider that are being flagged in the public domain." The board has since deployed a team of cybersecurity experts from various government sectors and Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) to secure these systems.