Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan on Sunday directed teams of technical experts from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras and IIT Kanpur, along with public sector banks (PSUs) to help the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) in resolving glitches, including payments in the post-results services portal.
Pradhan spoke to Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman following students’ complaints of payment failure and technical issues. Four public sector banks — State Bank of India, Bank of Baroda, Canara Bank and Indian Bank — will help the ECB “establish robust payment protocols to ensure timely payments, address payment glitches, and automatically recover chargebacks for overpayments,” the education ministry said in a statement on Sunday.
CBSE conducted the board exams for Class 12 from February 17 to April 10 and announced the results on May 13 – which showed that the overall pass percentage for Class 12 fell by 3.19 percentage points to 85.20%, under the board’s new digital evaluation system called On-Screen Marking (OSM). The average fell from 88.39% last year, the lowest level since 2019, when the pass rate was 83.40%.
The students alleged that OSM cost them admission into foreign universities, scholarships and engineering opportunities, while repeated portal failures disrupted their preparation for the Common University Entrance Test (CUET-UG) 2026 ongoing from May 11 to May 31.
The ministry said IIT experts “will implement focused technological improvements”, specifically examining “gateway stability, server performance, login authentication, payment gateways, and overall IT infrastructure strength.”
Read also:IIT Kanpur, Madras teams to help CBSE with ‘error-free’ revaluation process.
The intervention comes days after complaints from students who told HT that they were forced to stay up until midnight or wake up before dawn to reach the reassessment gate when traffic is lower, only to face breakdowns, fluctuating payment amounts, unclear copies of answer sheets and long delays.
For Sarvagya Singh from Bokaro in Jharkhand, the consequences are likely to be life-changing. The DPS Bokaro student scored 89.7%, well below the 93% he expected, including 71% in mathematics, a score he insists is impossible.
“The end result is absolutely illogical. The absolute minimum should never have dropped below 85%,” he said.
Singh said he paid $500 for scanned copies of five answer books but not yet received. The result threatens to cost him admission to the University of Hong Kong, which offered him an 80% scholarship, on the condition that he score 85% in mathematics.
He said, “You will not be accepted there if you are average. I deliberately skipped JEE because I was preparing to join the University of Hong Kong. Because of this evaluation, my scholarship dream has gone in vain and an entire year of my life may be wasted.”
“Imagine getting the most disastrous outcome of your life and the site keeps crashing on you. There were too many things you couldn’t handle at once,” added Singh, who described the reassessment portal as the “most unstable web application” he had ever used.
Devesh Agarwal of Haldwani from Uttarakhand, who expected to score 94% but scored 85%, said the answer sheets he received after paying $600 “It looked as if someone had hurriedly tapped it off the phone.”
“Many of the pages were unclear, and I actually found more than 15 inconsistencies on four answer sheets,” he said.
Agarwal said he had planned to apply to two foreign colleges that require a GPA of 90% or above, but now he fears he may lose both opportunities.
“You get paranoid when your dream colleges suddenly seem out of reach because of someone else’s mistake,” he said, adding that it took more than 25 attempts to register on May 19, and that his payment was stuck for 12 hours.
“CBSE never told us that the answer sheets would come from the Gmail address. I found them lying in my spam folder.”
Sarthak Sidhant from Ranchi said he missed the 75% eligibility threshold for JoSAA counseling despite expecting 87-88%. “My college options are very limited now,” he said. “I feel hopeless sometimes.”
He paid $500 for 5 answer books but not received till Sunday. He said he first tried to access the CBSE link circulated on May 19, but found it later removed, before finally succeeding at 6am on May 21. “The payment went through but it failed. It didn’t show up until 12 hours later.”
Darsh Kumar from Jamshedpur, who secured 76% against the expected 80-85%, said he was yet to complete his application.
“The portal kept showing ridiculous fee amounts, sometimes $69 and sometimes $69,420. He remained inaccessible most of the time. “It sparked deep self-doubt,” he said.
A student from Delhi who topped her school in Class 10 with 97.4% but scored 93% in Class 12 against the expected 95% said she is yet to receive scanned copies of six answer books despite payment on May 21.
“How can I file objections when I can’t even see my answer sheets?” I asked.
She said she finally submitted her application at 2.45am because the portal kept crashing during the day.
“This happens while many of us are writing CUET. We check the website every two hours instead of studying for the entrance exam. This disturbs our concentration.”
The principal of a private school in Delhi has blamed the OSM system for the problems faced by students.
“First, the CBSE awarded low marks due to improper checking under the new system. The audit started almost a month after the exams because the scanning took too long, and evaluators were pressured to check copies quickly. Teachers were not properly trained, many pages were missed, and marks were not awarded even for correct answers. Students seeking re-evaluation are now facing technical errors, payment failures, and frequent malfunctions. CBSE has hurriedly implemented this system and we are witnessing the chaos unleashed by it,” said the principal, requesting anonymity, OSM.
This was the first full rollout of OSM, under which 98.66 lakh answer books were digitally assessed while 13,583 copies were scanned manually because repeated scanning failed to produce clear images.
CBSE officially announced the broad OSM on May 9, a week before the results.
Following complaints from students against OSM assessment, CBSE has reduced the fees for scanned copies of $700 l $100, verification fee $500 l $100, and re-evaluation fee for each question from $100 l $25. It also announced that the money will be refunded if students’ grades increase after re-evaluation.
Requests to obtain copies of answers were opened on May 19, with the deadline extended twice, first from May 22 to May 23, and then to May 24, after repeated technical malfunctions.
At a press conference on May 17, CBSE officials said digitization would allow students to receive answer books “within hours” after applying for copies, comparing them with official marking schemes, identifying discrepancies, and reviewing objections by subject matter expert panels. They also said that the re-evaluation itself will be done through OSM.
However, on May 23, CBSE acknowledged complaints about “difficulties accessing the portal during peak demand, delays in payment confirmation, unclear or missing pages, and concerns regarding unmarked responses”, saying it reflected “technical capacity challenges and student concerns”.
On May 24, the board acknowledged that technical issues that occurred on May 21 and 22 caused incorrect fees to be charged. It said the overpayments would be automatically refunded and students who charged less would be informed separately, while C.C Scanned copies were made available without the need for new orders.
The scale of the concern is reflected in the numbers: CBSE received 2.94 lakh applications covering over 8.56 lakh answer books, compared to 1.31 lakh applications for 2.82 lakh answer books last year.
Pradhan said that “the interests of students remain paramount” and directed CBSE to take immediate corrective steps to ensure a “transparent, efficient and student-friendly system”.
