CBSE Faces Fresh Scrutiny Over Ignoring OSM Tender Warnings, Dry Run Flags
New Delhi: The Central Board of Secondary Education's (CBSE) On-Screen Marking (OSM) system, already under fire for technical glitches, security vulnerabilities and marking irregularities, is facing fresh scrutiny over changes in scanner specifications in the board's original Request for Proposal (RFP) document.
Congress Rajya Sabha MP and chairperson of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Education Digvijaya Singh, in a post on X, said that the original RFP document for the OSM system prescribed robotic scanners, which are automated systems that combine optical scanning with a robotic arm for high-volume, hands-free digitisation. The post, which tagged Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, questioned whether the document was modified to include ordinary scanners to favour a particular vendor.
Initially for OSM CBSE had decided to use Robotic Scanner in RFP (Request for Proposal) document. But later it was changed to ordinary Scanner. Why?
Only @dpradhanbjp would know.
Now what is a Robotic Scanner?
A robotic scanner combines a 3D or optical scanner with an…— Digvijaya Singh (@digvijaya_28) June 3, 2026
In a note to the Parliamentary Standing Committee, the IT Ministry confirmed that CBSE uses the OSM portal, developed by vendor COEMPT, for digital evaluation of Grade XII answer sheets, reported the Economic Times. The infrastructure, hosting 10 CBSE-related domains, is supported by Amazon Web Services (AWS) India.
The allegation adds a new dimension to the controversy surrounding the board's ignorance of early warnings flagged before the system went live.
Security concerns flagged repeatedly
According to the Economic Times, India's cyber security agency CERT-In (Indian Computer Emergency Response Team) highlighted serious issues in the evaluation platform, once in February and again thrice in May, declaring one of its portals unfit for deployment after a security audit.
After verifying the flaws, CERT-In alerted both the board and AWS, who claimed that the vulnerabilities were fixed. Meanwhile, the board asserted that corrective steps had been taken to resolve the flagged issues.
The report also stated that an education ministry report emphasised quality concerns, observing that the 13,583 answer sheets that were scanned around May 9 were "unsatisfactory, raising readability and assessment issues."
Additionally, during a meeting on the OSM system's rollout, Sarthak Sidhant, a Grade XII student from Jharkhand, presented a 7-page note to the parliamentary committee alleging irregularities in the OSM tender process, including clauses he claimed were structured to favour a specific vendor. Some panel members reportedly acknowledged his grasp of the issue and suggested that the ministry could gain from his expertise.
Interestingly, the most significant vulnerabilities in the system were brought to public notice by teenagers, a 17-year-old student who noted tender irregularities before the parliamentary committee and a 19-year-old who demonstrated security breaches and easy access to student sheets.
Also read: CBSE Is Under Fire Thanks to the Efforts of Teenager
The security concerns became harder to ignore after Nisarga Adhikary, a 19-year-old ethical hacker, posted on X on May 31 that he could access students' scanned answer sheets through the portal, sharing an image as evidence. The board, in response, acknowledged the vulnerabilities. As per The Indian Express, the vendor's security audit certificate had not been independently verified by CBSE before rolling out the system.
A public interest litigation was also filed in the Delhi High Court, following heightening complaints of mismatched answers sheets and evaluation inconsistencies, seeking judicial inquiry into the technical deficiencies of the platform and the failures in the board's grievance handling process.
Dry run red flags ignored
According to The Indian Express, concerns regarding the platform's inadequacies had been brought to the board's attention months before the Grade XII answer sheet evaluations took place. In January 2026, CBSE conducted a three-day OSM pilot in Delhi, involving principals, head examiners and subject experts from five institutes, including Kendriya Vidyalayas, Navodaya Vidyalayas and top private schools. Two formal reports submitted after the exercise documented a myriad of technical and operational failures in the system.
Some of the flagged problems included score increases by Additional Head Examiners being reflected as deductions, on-screen marks not aligning with the official marking scheme, only one sub-part's marks being counted in multi-part questions, the system forcing fractional mark awards in places where the marking scheme did not permit them, evaluation progress not being auto-saved, the platform freezing when the undo function was used and the system allowing evaluators to award marks against blank or unattempted questions.
Both reports recommended delaying the implementation of the OSM system at least by a year, citing the need for more trials and improved evaluator training. The second report highlighted more than 36 technical and operational concerns, calling attention to risks of superficial checking and an absence of a mechanism for returning scripts to evaluators when multiple errors were detected, reported The Indian Express.
The report added that the board's governing body had suggested OSM be implemented only after completion of pilot projects across regional offices, as early as June 2025. However, the January dry run was restricted to only five schools.
Board's response
In response to the reports, CBSE said that several fixes has been made, including adding a 'Save' option, simplifying the mark deletion process, resolving static IP issue, repositioning marks display to avoid obscuring answer sheets and enhancing the server capacity, reported The Indian Express. The board maintained that the glitches had been rectified, a claim widely disputed by the weeks-long controversy surrounding the platform.
Also read: 'Now We are Hoping that Under the PM, Paper Leak Would Not Happen': Congress MP Digvijaya Singh
Since the security breach became public, CBSE chairman Rahul Singh and board secretary Himanshu Gupta have been removed from their posts. A committee has been constituted to probe the procurement of services for the OSM system, with findings due to the Department of Personnel and Training within a month, and students have been given until June 6 to apply for re-evaluation. No official explanation for the scanner specification change has been given so far.
This article went live on June third, two thousand twenty six, at twenty-three minutes past twelve at noon.The Wire is now on WhatsApp. Follow our channel for sharp analysis and opinions on the latest developments.
