At the age of 19, most students decide which college they will attend after school. Nisarja Adhikari says he has already worked with startups, contributed to open source projects and dealt with cybersecurity research — experiences, he says, that justified calling himself a “software engineer” even before entering college.
Adhikary recently found himself at the center of a national controversy after he claimed to have exposed major vulnerabilities in the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE)’s on-screen marking (OSM) portal. But beyond the hacking allegations, the teenager’s age and credentials also sparked widespread curiosity online.
I started programming as a teenager
During an interview with Hindustan Times, Adhikari was asked how he would describe himself as a software engineer even though he was just 19 years old and had just finished Class 12.
“It can be true at the same time,” he said. “I have been programming since an early age.”
Nisarja Adhikari said he worked with several startups and contributed to open source software projects before completing his studies.
He added that he has worked as a “founding architect” and with venture capital-backed startups.
“I also worked as a founding engineer at one point. I also worked at some big VC-funded startups,” he said.
Read also: CBSE OSM portal has ‘master password’ that can be used to tamper with marks, claims ‘hacker’ Nisarga Adhikary
Class 12 was cleared this year
The teenager said he appeared for the Class 12 board exams this year itself and got his results earlier this month.
“Only this year,” he said when asked when he finished Class 12.
The irony of a student who had just finished Year 12 claiming flaws in the very system used to grade answer papers quickly became a major discussion point online.
Read also: CBSE has “ignored” calls for regional trials before rolling out OSM for assessment of the Class 12 board exam
How did he become interested in cybersecurity?
Adhikari said his interest in CBSE OSM began after he noticed widespread criticism surrounding the newly introduced digital assessment platform.
“So, in February, when the exams started, CBSE just said that it would conduct OSM this year. This was criticized all over the media. People are angry,” he said.
He said curiosity about how the platform handles data and tags led him to examine the portal more closely.
“This made me curious. How do they protect data? How is the data processed? How are marks awarded?” He said.
According to Adhikari, he located the portal through publicly available CBSE publications and then started reading the front-end code that was delivered to browsers.
“I started reading the code that was brought into the browser when the portal was opened,” he said.
“You don’t need a college degree to become an engineer.”
When asked about calling himself a software engineer without a formal engineering degree, Adhikari said technical ability was more important than academic qualifications.
“I don’t think engineering is like you, you don’t need a university degree to become an engineer,” he said.
Drawing comparisons with tech entrepreneurs, he added: “A lot of founders have dropped out. Like Mark Zuckerberg… he designed the biggest social networking website in the world, and he doesn’t have a formal university degree.”
“I don’t consider myself a graduate either. I call myself a software engineer,” he added.
CBSE OSM Controversy
Nisarga Adhikary’s comments come amid growing scrutiny over CBSE’s OSM system, which was introduced this year for Class 12 board exams. The platform faced criticism after students reported blurry scans, missing pages and alleged mismatches in answer sheets uploaded during reassessment.
The controversy escalated after Adhikari claimed to have found security vulnerabilities in the portal, including what he described as a “master password” that could allegedly bypass authentication and access examiners’ accounts.
CBSE denied that the actual assessment portal had been compromised, saying the vulnerabilities were only related to an exam website containing sample data.
