The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) on Monday failed to operate its verification and re-evaluation portal for Class 12, despite earlier announcing the reopening of the service on that day. The delay has left thousands of students waiting for a chance to appeal their marks and apply for re-evaluation of answer scripts. Track live updates
The delay comes even after a four-member expert team from IIT Kanpur and IIT Madras was tasked with reviewing and enhancing the board’s post-results services platform following a technical glitch and complaints from students.
While CBSE said in a post The website did not launch until the story was filed on June 2.
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Students express their frustration
Manisha Singh, a Class XII student from Jabalpur, said, “I applied for answer copies on May 29 and have not yet received my answer copy in Chemistry. It is frustrating that they are unable to provide copies on time and are unable to start the re-evaluation portal where we can raise objections and check our marks.”
Another student Anuj Kumar from Delhi said that the portal kept displaying a maintenance message throughout the day. “I have been checking the portal since morning but it shows that the website is under maintenance. I want to raise objections in all subjects as my transcripts were not checked properly and my marks will increase after the examination. I am angry at the behavior of CBSE,” Kumar said.
Officials are talking about CBSE delay
Earlier, in response to queries as to why the portal was not operational till 7 pm, a senior IIT Kanpur official, requesting anonymity, said there was still time left before the announced deadline expires.
“Well, there is still time until midnight. We are constantly working on fixing the website and continuing supervision of the CBSE and it will be up and running,” the official said.
The official added, “It is unfortunate that students are not able to access it. If we could have avoided this, we could have done it. We want to make sure that the platform is robust, but there is no way that anyone can guarantee its 100% robustness. We are trying to achieve maximum robustness, and that is the effort our teams have been putting in over the past few days. Now we are reaching a point where we believe we can launch it. So, it took time, unfortunately. The portal will be launched before midnight.”
CBSE did not respond to HT’s queries.
Asked about the reason for the continuing delay, a senior CBSE official told HT that the final examinations are still underway. “We are conducting final security checks and hope that soon we will get the site up and running,” the official said.
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Why is the portal important?
The portal was originally scheduled to reopen on May 29 for students who have already received scanned copies of assessed answer books. However, the board postponed the launch to June 1, saying additional time was needed to ensure a “transparent and error-free” process.
Students were allowed to apply for scanned copies of answer scripts between May 19 and 25. The portal has remained unavailable since May 26. Under the revised schedule, students who have received their answer books will be able to raise objections to questions where they believe marks have not been awarded correctly. These objections will then be reviewed by subject matter experts through the On-Screen Marking (OSM) system, according to an Education Ministry official.
The government intervenes
The delay prompted intervention by the Union government. On May 29, Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan directed IIT Kanpur and IIT Madras to examine the technical issues reported in the post-result services provided by CBSE and help the board in ensuring an error-free process.
A four-member team comprising two experts each from IIT Kanpur and IIT Madras was then deputed to conduct a comprehensive technical audit of the portal, examine the workflow and help resolve glitches.
Increase scrutiny of the evaluation process
The audit comes amid growing concerns about board evaluation and post-result processes. CBSE admitted about 20 cases of mix-ups in the answer sheet after the results were announced. Meanwhile, nearly one in four of the nearly 1.8 million students who sat the Grade 12 exam have applied for scanned copies of their answer books — a 208% increase from last year, according to officials.
This year also saw the first large-scale implementation of CBSE’s screen marking system. Under the digital evaluation exercise, about 9.86 million answer scripts were evaluated electronically, while 13,583 answer scripts had to be evaluated manually after repeated scanning failed.
background
The developments follow the announcement of Class 12 results on May 13, when the overall pass percentage dropped to 85.20%, down from 88.39% last year and the lowest since 2019. The results season was accompanied by complaints from several students and parents who questioned the marks awarded in some subjects and asked for greater scrutiny in the evaluation of the answer sheet under the OSM system.
While CBSE is accepting applications through its own portal, the actual re-evaluation of the answer scripts will be done by teachers on Coempt’s OnMark platform – the same system that was used for the initial on-screen evaluation of the answer books.
