The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) on Tuesday launched its much-awaited portal for Class 12 students seeking to check answer sheets and re-evaluate marks. The rollout was marred by technical glitches, claims of cyberattacks, and ultimately administrative disruptions.
The portal that It opens one day later than scheduled and allows students to seek verification of problems identified in the scanned copies of answer books provided by the board and apply for re-evaluation of answers. The application window will remain open until midnight on June 6.
Read also | The CBSE chairman and secretary were transferred in a government action amid the OSM row
Leadership change amid OSM scrutiny
CBSE Chairman Rahul Singh and Secretary Himanshu Gupta were transferred from the board on Tuesday. Prashant Lokhande has been appointed as the new Chairman of CBSE.
The surprise reappointments come amid intense government scrutiny of the company’s purchasing process On-screen marking (OSM) system for the board. It is the digital platform deployed for comprehensive evaluation of Class 12 answer scripts.
The Union Ministry of Education has since ordered an extensive investigation into the contract awarded to the Hyderabad-based company Coempt EduTeck requested a detailed report from the Board of Directors.
“The ministry will take strong action against those responsible if any wrongdoing is proven,” an official said, as HT reported earlier. They added, “Accountability will be established at multiple levels if procedural lapses or negligence are proven in the tender process.”
Read also | The government is seeking a detailed report from CBSE on the OSM tender amid a row over Class 12 evaluation
The contract was awarded to Coempt EduTeck on December 5 last year (74 days before the start of board exams on February 17) after the company cut tech giant TCS by 60%.
CBSE officials assured that the tender process strictly adheres to the General Financial Rules (GFR) and government procurement guidelines.
17-year-old whistleblower
On Tuesday, a 17-year-old student appeared before the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Education, Women, Children, Youth and Sports. Sarthak Siddhant independently analyzed public tender documents on the Central Public Procurement Portal and published his findings on his blog.
The teenager claimed the board had “systematically rewritten the rules” across three bidding rounds in his favour Coempt EduTeck, which previously operated under the name Globarena.
“There were at least 15 discrepancies, according to my blog. I would like to highlight three-four of them. Let me give the background on Coempt. It was known as Globarena, and they have a very suspicious background. 23 students committed suicide due to coempt,” Siddhant told news agency ANI.
“The first discrepancy is that there are three ‘underperforming’ items that have been completely erased from the new RFP. In the previous RFP, there was a line called ‘Previously Blacklisted’ while in the new RFP, it has been changed to ‘Currently Blacklisted’. Why would the Board want a service provider that was previously blacklisted?”
separate The Hindustan Times investigation also found technical changes made between successive bidding rounds.
Read also | CBSE ‘Bid Investigator’ Sarthak Siddhant’s Big Day in Delhi: Two Meetings and a Government Action Spurred by His Blog
The Parliamentary Standing Committee then reviewed the concerns surrounding the OSM system and heard submissions from CBSE and Education Ministry officials. Although the committee cannot directly punish those responsible, it can search for records, summon individuals, and recommend action.
Following the meeting, Congress MP Digvijaya Singh, who heads the committee, said the committee will now wait for CBSE’s response on the issues raised.
Rahul Gandhi supports student whistleblowers
Leader of the Opposition in Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, supported Siddhant’s findings.
“[Sidhant] He has exposed the hollowness of (Education Minister) Dharmendra Pradhan Ji’s denial. The Prime Minister remains silent as usual. The question is simple: Who are they protecting, and why? “An independent judicial investigation is now necessary to uncover the full extent of this fraud,” Gandhi wrote on X.
Gateway struggled on opening day
Students trying to access The portal reported a host of technical difficulties shortly after it went live.
Many said they experienced repeated authentication failures despite entering the correct credentials, and received messages saying: “Verification failed, please check details.” Others reported that the website froze after choosing a theme or redirected them to blank screens, forcing them to restart the process.
Students using mobile devices also complained of interface issues, including overlapping text and buttons that couldn’t be clicked.
CBSE claims cyber attacks
Amid complaints about disruptions, CBSE claimed that the portal had been targeted by cyber attacks. “While thousands of students accessed the CBSE re-evaluation portal today, malicious actors attempted to disrupt the services through “A barrage of cyber attacks,” the council said.
According to CBSE, “The latest was an attempted denial of service attack that caused 1.5 million visits to the portal within 2 minutes and over 1 lakh attempts to gain unauthorized access to files.”
CBSE Stock Portal Update
Later, it issued another update: “The portal currently supports approximately 14,000 concurrent users, with over 28,000 successful submissions as of 10pm today. Based on student feedback, further improvements have been implemented, including expanded session time limits, to enhance the user experience. Our teams remain constantly monitoring to ensure a safe, reliable and student-friendly platform.”
The council said that no offline applications will be accepted and applications submitted after the deadline will not be considered.
What students can apply for
Students can report problems with scanned answer sheets, such as missing pages, supplementary sheets, maps, graphs, unclear pages, incorrect answer books, or scoring against an incorrect set of question sheets.
They can also request re-evaluation of specific questions by providing question and page numbers. CBSE is now being shipped $100 per answer book for verification and $25 per question for re-evaluation. Once students click ‘Freeze’ and proceed to checkout, their order details cannot be changed.
