Opposition leader and Congress MP Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday evening met Sarthak Siddhant, the 17-year-old whose blog exposed alleged irregularities in the procurement of CBSE’s on-screen marking (OSM) system. He is the second teenage whistleblower – of the three overall – whom Gandhi has publicly supported in three days.
The meeting came hours after Siddhant was deposed before the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Education, and shared his investigation; Hours later, the Narendra Modi government replaced the CBSE chief and ordered a probe into the OSM procurement.
Siddhant says he has discovered “at least 15 inconsistencies” in successive CBSE tenders, and the rules have been rewritten to favor the company running the OSM, Coempt EduTeck; CBSE and the company have denied the allegations. CBSE has acknowledged the errors in OSM and has sought to rectify them over the past week since the issue came to light.
“Sarthak, apne sidhanton pe adig raho,” Rahul said in Hindi on
Read also | Gen Z blogger meets Parl panel for CBSE probe, then takes action against officers
He also used the “#TenderInvestigator” coin in another play on the teen network through tender documents on the central public procurement portal.
The gesture comes after Gandhi’s meeting on May 31 with Vedant Shrivastava, a Class XII student who found that the physics answer sheet uploaded by CBSE under his roll number was not his. His post
In a video of this interaction, Gandhi turned the online abuse students faced into mockery of their critics. “A revealing chat with my fellow anti-national Soros agents,” Gandhi wrote.
“Vedant and his friends are bright and brave young Indians who asked simple questions to CBSE and the Modi government but received insults instead of answers. They deserve a bright and secure future. We will make sure they get it.”
In the clip, Vedant told Gandhi that he was called a “Pakistani agent” because he reported the wrong answer sheet. Gandhi asked the students: “Were you also called terrorists? Tell me!” Then he laughed, saying: “Seventeen-year-old deep state agents! Show their faces… Come on, show the faces of these ‘terrorists’!”
Siddhant, Vedant’s elder brother, said critics tried to paint them as “agents of the deep state” seeking to foment unrest rather than address their grievances.
Siddhant, Vedant and a third teenager – 19-year-old Nisarja Adhikari, an ethical hacker who pointed out vulnerabilities in the OSM portal – have become the public faces of a wider revolt against a spate of exam failures this year, which also includes the cancellation of the NEET-UG 2026 medical entrance exam, which is now headed for a re-examination on June 21 after a paper leak. (Nisarja does not fully show his face, and instead uses anime images as his identity.)
Their findings have also been picked up by the Cockroach Janta Party, an online movement that emerged last month. It is demanding the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, and plans to hold a protest at Jantar Mantar on June 6. This “party” itself is a play on words on Chief Justice of India Surya Kant’s comments referring to insects and parasites last month.
Rahul Gandhi separately demanded Pradhan’s removal and a judicial probe into the OSM row. Pradhan said he took “full responsibility” for the unrest and promised not to make any more mistakes.
