Rahul Gandhi Targets CBSE Over Re-Evaluation Fees, Says Students Are Paying For Board's Mistakes

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Monday criticised the Modi government over the CBSE's re-evaluation process and the costs associated with it, alleging that students are being made to pay to rectify errors in a system that is increasingly treating education as a commercial activity.

His remarks come amid complaints from several CBSE Class 12 students who alleged that answer sheets uploaded during the re-evaluation process did not belong to them, raising concerns about the Board's On-Screen Marking (OSM) system. According to PTI, Gandhi has shared two videos of his interaction with affected students, including Vedant, whose post about a mismatched Physics answer sheet went viral on social media.

Gandhi shared a video snippet from his conversation with CBSE students facing problems due to the OSM system of the Board.

"Beware of pickpockets - today, they are sitting right inside the CBSE. If your marks are incorrect due to a CBSE error, what do you get? A bill: Digital scanned copy: Rs. 100 per subject. Re-totalling: Rs. 100 per paper. Re-evaluation: Rs. 25 per question," Gandhi said in a post in Hindi on X, accompanying the video clip.

A student may have to pay up to Rs 2,000 just to ensure the accurate evaluation of their own answer sheet, the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha said.

Just imagine the revenue CBSE is generating when 400,000 students have submitted such applications, he said.

When scanning is done using mobile phones, incorrect marking is inevitable, Gandhi said, adding that the cost of rectifying those errors is being borne by students.

"The mistake belongs to the CBSE. The punishment falls on the student. The profit goes to the government," the former Congress chief said.

"When education is treated not as a service, but as a business, errors are not corrected - they are multiplied. And the heaviest price for this is being paid by our children - with their time, their self-confidence, and their future," Gandhi said.

Vedant, a Class 12 student, had recently alleged in a post on X that the Physics answer sheet uploaded by the CBSE under the revaluation process was not his. The post went viral, after which several other students took to social media with similar claims.

In the video, Gandhi is seen having an informal chat with Vedant, his brother and other students about their ordeal.

In the video clip, Gandhi is seen asking the students about the cost of re-evaluation and the modalities of the process.

"This is what we are seeing, not just in NEET, in CBSE, everywhere, that you have financialised the education system. The second is over-centralisation. So you have taken the whole system and you have centralised the whole system. So if there is a problem, it is a critical failure of the system.

"Whereas if you have a decentralised system, then one node fails, another node fails, you can still manage it. So there is a structural problem now in the Indian education system," Gandhi says in the video while interacting with the students.

This is the second clip he has shared from the interaction.

Gandhi on Sunday had also targeted the Centre over the CBSE OSM row, sharing the first video clip of his interaction with the group of students and saying they had asked the Modi government simple questions but received "insults instead of answers", PTI reported.

Asserting that the students deserved a bright future, Gandhi had said, "We will make sure they get it".

Posting the clip on his social media accounts, Gandhi had described it as a "revealing chat with my fellow 'anti-national Soros agents'."

"Vedant and his friends are brilliant, brave young Indians who asked CBSE and the Modi government simple questions -- but got insults instead of answers," Gandhi had said in his post on X, accompanying the video.

"They deserve a bright and secure future. We will make sure they get it," he added.

Several CBSE Class 12 students had flagged mix-up cases after accessing scanned copies uploaded on the portal and finding that the answer sheets did not belong to them.

The CBSE later reached out to them and shared their correct answer sheets. The Board said that it had taken up on "top priority" the cases related to alleged mismatched answer sheets and other concerns faced by students in the revaluation process, according to PTI.

Experts from IIT Madras and IIT Kanpur, along with the Digital Infrastructure Corporation of India (DICI), are examining the system and strengthening the portal and payment gateway integration, government sources said, reported PTI.

Coempt, the company that carried out the OSM process for the CBSE examinations, has also been criticised by Gandhi, who alleged that the firm was already mired in controversy under its old name, Globarena.

(With inputs from PTI)