OSM CBSE Controversy:17-year-old Student Whistleblower Appears Before House Panel

Seventeen-year-old Sarthak Sidhant, a class 12 student who exposed the alleged irregularities in the Central Board of Secondary Education’s (CBSE) On-Screen Marking (OSM) system tendering process, Tuesday appeared before the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Education, Women, Children, Youth and Sports.

Notably, a day earlier, students nationwide complained of inaccessibility of the post-result activities portal that was to facilitate revaluation of answer sheets.

Sidhant gave a detailed presentation before the Parliamentary Panel on how, according to him, the CBSE “rewrote rules” to favour Coempt EduTeck, the firm under scrutiny after large scale discrepancies in evaluation of CBSE class 12th results.

Digvijay Singh, chair of the panel, told ANI “He (Sidhant) has made his presentation. It is for the committee to decide (on the replies given by the CBSE).” The panel now awaits a reply from the CBSE.

Sidhant earlier published his findings on his blog titled ‘How CBSE rewrote rules to favour Coempt EduTeck’. He told ANI “I have written a blog that compares the tender documents of CBSE. I have uploaded and published it. There were at least 15 discrepancies, as per my blog.”

He added “The first discrepancy is that there were three clauses of ‘poor performance’ which were completely wiped out from the new RFP. In the earlier RFP, there was a clause called ‘blacklisted earlier’ whereas in the new RFP, it was changed to ‘blacklisted currently’. Why would the board want a service provider which was blacklisted earlier?”

RFP refers to Request for Proposal issued by an organization-here CBSE- to announce a new project and invite qualified contractors or vendors to submit bids accordingly.

Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi, among other opposition leaders, shared Sidhant’s blog. Gandhi wrote on X “(Sidhant) has revealed the hollowness of Dharmendra Pradhan ji’s denials. The PM remains silent, as usual. The question is simple: who are they protecting, and why? An independent judicial inquiry is now essential to uncover the full extent of this scam.”

While Coempt EduTeck denied any wrongdoing, CBSE officials told media that the contract was awarded to the lowest qualified bidder as per the quality-cum-cost based selection framework.