The Delhi High Court on Monday issued notice on a plea seeking an independent probe into alleged irregularities, technical deficiencies and grievance redressal failures related to the Central Board of Secondary Education’s (OSM) On-Screen Digital Evaluation System (OSM) that affected Class 12 students.
The bench of Justices Neena Bansal Krishna and Madhu Jain sought a response from the government and the CBSE bench on the petition filed by the National Students Union of India (NSUI), the student wing of the Opposition Congress, and fixed June 12 as the next date for the hearing.
This came even as CBSE’s lawyer, MA Niyazi, questioned the viability of the petition, arguing that it was the student wing of a political party that had filed it. He said that educational matters should not be politicized.
OSM, where examiners evaluate scanned answer sheets online rather than physically examining them, has come under scrutiny amid allegations of technical glitches, unclear scans, inconsistencies in assessment, and concerns about data security and transparency after the Class 12 results were announced on May 13. Its contract was awarded to Coempt Edu Tech on December 5, 74 days before the board exams began on February 17.
On June 1, the Union Education Ministry had sought a report from CBSE on the procurement process for the OSM. CBSE opened the online portal for checking marks and re-evaluating results of Class 12 board exams on June 2 after repeated delays. On the same day, the government replaced the chairman and secretary of the Central Securities Board and launched an investigation into the procurement of services.
In the petition, NSUI president Vinod Jakhar said the board’s repeated public clarifications reflect serious doubts among students and the public regarding the integrity of the evaluation system. I have requested directions for manual re-checking and physical verification of answer sheets when students question the accuracy of scanned copies or the assessment process.
The petition, championed by advocates Rishav Ranjan and Esha Bakshi, sought an extension of the verification and re-evaluation portal by a month to enable students to pursue remedies, along with compensatory marks for students whose answer scripts are allegedly missing, unclear or incorrectly assessed.
The NSUI petition noted that the Board acknowledged, through public communications, that the portal for obtaining scanned copies of answer books encountered a technical glitch. She noted that approximately 127,146 applications for 387,399 scanned answer sheets were submitted within a short period, reflecting an unusual level of anxiety and lack of confidence among students regarding the assessment process.
Such a large volume of applications filed immediately after the announcement of results cannot be dismissed as routine action after the result, the petition said. CBSE has issued a clarification on the allegations against the OSM portal, stressing that the impugned URL was just a test website containing sample data, it added.
The appeal stated that the need for successive public clarifications indicates that serious doubts have emerged in the public’s mind regarding the integrity of the digital assessment system.
