Leader of the Opposition (LoP) in Lok Sabha and Congress MP Rahul Gandhi on Sunday blamed the Center and the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) for compromising the process of evaluation of answer sheets for Class XII examinations, alleging that changes in tender specifications have led to answer sheets being scanned on mobile phones.
He was responding to a social media post by Sarthak Siddhant, a Class XII student from Jharkhand, who alleged that the board gradually changed technical requirements across three successive rounds of tendering in a way that favored the vendor who eventually secured the contract.
The congressman’s remarks come at a time when CBSE is facing mounting pressure following reports of technical glitches in the post-results portal and irregularities in assessed answer sheets.
Rahul Gandhi’s new attack on CBSE
In a post on website
“The CBSE tender in May 2025 required answer sheets to be scanned using automatic scanners, spine-preserving, at a minimum of 300 dpi. The tender re-issued in August quietly removed all of that. The scanners ‘went generic. The resolution came down to 200 dpi,'” Gandhi said.
He also claimed that the answer sheets were scanned using mobile phones.
“Now we know what that means in practical terms. It has been revealed that COEMPT scanned answer sheets using mobile phones. Blurred copies, missing pages, unscanned books – they are not ‘errors’. They are the expected outcome of a contract written to suit the seller,” Gandhi alleged.
Gandhi described the matter as a “fraud” and said: “This is a fraud. Every child whose grades are incorrectly evaluated is a victim of it.”
Taking aim at Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, Gandhi asked why the government was not responding to the issue.
“This morning, the Prime Minister had time to talk about mangoes. He did not have time to talk about 18.5 lakh children whose answer sheets were being checked on phones. Dharmendra Pradhan is still sitting in office. Modi’s silence is no longer indifference. It is complicity,” Gandhi said.
Notably, he was responding to a post by Siddhant, who spent several days examining tender documents available on the central public procurement portal and later shared his findings on his website.
The main problem, Siddhant said, is that the technical and eligibility requirements for the OSM contract were gradually relaxed over three rounds of the request for proposal process, which ultimately allowed Coempt EduTeck to qualify. He claimed that many of the changes appear to be closely aligned with the company’s profile.
CBSE to punish seller?
The board is set to take action against on-screen marking (OSM) service provider, Coempt Edu Teck, over issues associated with online assessment of Class 12 answer sheets, officials familiar with the matter told HT on Sunday.
The Hyderabad-based company will face penalties under the provisions of the tender document issued in August 2025, officials said.
The tender, which was launched on August 28, includes a series of financial penalties linked to the time taken to resolve the issues. These include a fine of $1 lakh for every 15 minutes delay in fixing the issue after the CBSE official reports it to the help desk.
The provisions also allow for withholding of security deposits and termination of the contract.
With input from agencies
