CBSE On-Screen Marking Glitches Under Scanner as Dharmendra Pradhan Seeks Detailed Report

Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan has sought a detailed report from the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) after multiple Class 12 students and parents complained about glitches linked to the newly introduced On-Screen Marking (OSM) system for board exam evaluation.

The CBSE has faced criticism in recent weeks over technical problems in the re-evaluation process and allegations of answer-sheet mismatches under the digital evaluation system.

“The IIT Madras and IIT Kanpur will look into the technical glitch faced by the CBSE portal. Those who applied for revaluation will get a scanned copy,” Pradhan said.

He added that the government was examining the issue seriously and expressed confidence that technical guidance from the IITs would help resolve the problems.

IIT Teams to Examine Portal and Infrastructure Issues

Expert teams from Indian Institute of Technology Madras and Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur will review portal stability, server performance, login systems and payment gateway functionality.

Officials said the teams would also assess the overall robustness of the CBSE’s IT infrastructure and recommend corrective measures.

Under the OSM system, evaluators checked scanned answer sheets digitally instead of evaluating physical copies.

Education Ministry officials confirmed that nearly 98 lakh answer books, amounting to almost 1.96 crore pages, were scanned and evaluated within a compressed timeline.

Congress Attacks Government Over OSM Rollout

Jairam Ramesh criticised the CBSE and the Education Ministry for introducing the system without adequate preparation.

“The question really is why these issues were not anticipated? Why did the CBSE and the ministry not plan carefully before adopting this OSM system?” Ramesh said.

He also questioned the delay in the government’s response to the issue and attacked the Education Ministry over the handling of the crisis.

Students Flag Answer Sheet Mix-Ups and Portal Failures

The controversy intensified after a Delhi-based Class 12 student alleged on X that the Physics answer sheet uploaded by CBSE during the re-evaluation process did not belong to him.

“We applied for photocopies of my answer sheets. And I am shattered because the Physics answer sheet uploaded by the CBSE is not mine,” the student said, according to The Hindu.

CBSE officials later acknowledged that there had been a mix-up in the student’s case and reportedly provided him with the original answer sheet.

Students across the country also reported blurred scans, rotated pages, overlapping images and missing supplementary sheets while accessing scanned copies online.

The re-evaluation portal itself faced repeated outages after opening on May 19, with many students reporting payment failures, login issues and incomplete application submissions.

Experts Raise Questions Over Evaluation Quality

Educationist and RTI activist Keshav Agarwal questioned how evaluation quality could be maintained if scanned copies themselves were unreadable.

“Students posed an obvious question — if we cannot read these copies, how did examiners evaluate them?” Agarwal told The Hindu.

He also alleged that evaluators had complained about screen fatigue, poor scan resolution and missed answers during the OSM evaluation process.

According to reports, more than 68,000 answer books had to be rescanned due to poor image quality, while over 13,500 answer sheets were reportedly pulled for manual rechecking.