The Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) Kanpur and IIT Madras have sent a four-member team of experts to help the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) resolve glitches in its post-results services portal, with the team set to conduct a full technical audit to determine whether the glitches were caused by software flaws, system overload, possible external interference or cyber attacks, directors of both institutes said on Monday.
The development comes a day after Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan directed both the premier institutes to examine the technical issues reported since the start of post-test re-evaluation services this year and help the board in ensuring an error-free process.
The team, which includes experts from both IIT Kanpur and IIT Madras, will review the portal’s technical systems and workflow.
“The team includes experts in computer systems, operations and cyber security. They will conduct a complete audit of CBSE’s reassessment portal to identify possible reasons behind the glitches and suggest corrective actions,” IIT Kanpur director Manindra Agrawal told HT.
IIT Madras director V Kamakoti said the team will conduct root cause analysis of payment-related errors, login and access failures, server-side issues, software architecture and overall system performance.
“The team will examine whether the disruptions are caused by internal software issues, server-side pressure or external interference, and recommend corrective measures to make the portal stable and reliable,” he said.
Kamakoti said it would be “too early” to conclude whether there were cyberattacks or other external disruptions.
He added: “The audit will first determine the exact technical reason behind the malfunctions before reaching any conclusion. Experts will review how the program works, identify weaknesses in the system and suggest improvements to prevent similar disruptions.”
The Ministry of Education said in a statement on Sunday that experts will review the portal’s stability, server performance and overall IT infrastructure strength, along with examining login authentication, user access systems and payment gateways.
The intervention comes in the wake of complaints from students and parents over technical issues in the re-evaluation process after the Class 12 results were announced on May 13. The board’s overall pass percentage fell to 85.20%, down from 88.39% last year – the lowest since 2019. This year marks the first large-scale rollout of CBSE’s On-Screen Marking (OSM) system, under which 9.86 million answer books were assessed digitally, while 13,583 were manually scanned after repeated scanning failures.
