The OSM Controversy and the Rise of India’s Vendor-Driven Governance Model

On February 9, 2026, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) announced the introduction of On-Screen Marking (OSM) for class 12 examinations. Just 66 days ago, on December 5, 2025, Coempt Edu Tek was awarded the contract for digital evaluation of class 12 answer sheets.

Fast forward to May 19, 2026. Vedant Shrivastava, a class 12 student submitted his Physics copy for re-evaluation after receiving unexpectedly low marks.

The problem of receiving uncharacteristically low marks in the recently conducted examinations was faced by many students. A Hindustan Times report stated that the class 12 pass percentage dropped by 3.19% from last year.

On May 23, when Shrivastava received his Physics answer sheet he was shocked. The answer sheet did not belong to him. The very same day he aired his grievances on X, uploading side by side screenshots of his English, Computer Science and Physics papers to show how his Physics paper was different.

The post turned into a bigger social media controversy which eventually engulfed the CBSE in a mountain of criticism after multiple similar and separate incidents of discrepancies in the system were flagged by different students.

At the center of the controversy was OSM, the new digital system which was supposed to make the examination process efficient and transparent. The system failed to conduct the examination process smoothly and plunged peoples trust in public examinations to unimaginable depths.

But, perhaps the seeds of this failure were planted long ago in the way the contract for the digital evaluation system was awarded.

The Tender Process

The first tender for selecting a company to manage the digital evaluation system was issued on February 4, 2025. The tender was cancelled as no bidder could satisfy CBSE’s requirements.

A second tender was issued on May 2, 2025. This too was cancelled as all companies failed technical evaluation. It included Coempt Edutek, the company which eventually won the contract and Tata Consultancy Services, the runners up for the contract.

A fresh third tender was issued on August 28, 2025. It featured relaxation of many norms which the CBSE had set in the previous two rounds.

Coempt won the bid, quoting ₹24.75 per copy evaluated while TCS had quoted a significantly higher amount at ₹65 per copy evaluated, a NDTV report stated.

Perhaps, it is in these relaxed technical requirements and the practice of choosing the lowest qualifying bidder that the majority of the problems lie.

Diluted Requirements

After failing to secure a vendor after two tenders and mere months remaining in the examination, the CBSE lowered several technical requirements from the previous two tenders as well as modified the qualification criteria for vendors who could be awarded the contract.

According to a report by The Hindustan Times, the minimum scanning resolution was reduced from “300 DPI and above” to “minimum 200 DPI with clearly readable content,” and the mandatory Capability Maturity Model Integration certification was lowered from Level 5, the highest tier, to Level 3.

CBSE also removed the poor performance clause which earlier mandated that a service provider would be instantly disqualified if a confidential inquiry or past record revealed an history of “abandoning work,” “not properly completing contractual obligations,” or “financial failures/weaknesses in any institution.”

This change might not have garnered much attention if Coempt Eduteck, the winning bidder, had not reportedly failed the compliance requirement.

The penalties for errors were also significantly reduced in the final tender contract.

Coempt Eduteck

Coempt Eduteck is an EdTech company which provides end-to-end examination solutions. According to the company website they also automate critical examination processes like pre-examination, question paper management, AI-based online examination, answer-book digitization (uncut), digital evaluation, and post examination.

The company was previously named Globarena Technologies and was entrusted with conducting the 2019 Telangana Intermediate Examination in 2019.

The examination was rife with systemic issues and discrepancies. The flawed results led to 23 student suicides across the state. A three-member committee appointed by the Telangana Government found “systemic failures, procedural collapse, and glaring negligence” on the part of both the company and the board.

“When a vendor with a documented history of large-scale evaluation disasters is awarded a contract covering 18.5 lakh students, without any public disclosure, without transparent scrutiny and when that system then fails students in precisely the same ways it failed them before, we cannot simply call it a technical glitch. We must call it what it is: a failure of institutional accountability." Said Ajitesh Basani, Managing Director, The Shri Ram Universal School, Bengaluru.

As per NDTV, CBSE officials defended the company stating that the High Court found no wrongdoing by the firm while also stating that Coempt was already handling digital evaluation and post-examination management work in several states, including Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Tamil Nadu and Gujarat.

Lack of Testing

CBSE conducted a webinar on February 13 after which a training portal was opened for the teachers to practice on past years copies. That was it, no pilot program was conducted to test the system nor was the system introduced in a phased manner.

The board did not know how the system would function at scale and they did not bother to check it. Several teachers said the system required at least two years of phased implementation.

Despite facing several hurdles and an ever-contracting timeframe CBSE still decided on a full-scale rollout of a brand-new system without proper testing. This hurried approach towards implementation may have doomed the system from the beginning.

The controversy also exposes a deeper structural issue in public administration: the growing dependence on private technology vendors.

The ‘Vendor State’

In a world where the government increasingly relies on private technology vendors for delivering essential services like examinations, databases, digital identity systems, welfare delivery etc. it has become increasingly important that a robust framework for selecting these vendors be created.

Traditional government procurement systems were designed to evaluate physical infrastructure, administrative services and supply contracts. There is a need for these procurement systems to be updated with the times.

This increasing reliance on these intermediaries can lead to wider problems such as accountability gaps. There is a diffusion of responsibility across government departments, vendors, operators etc.

This has also become evident in the NEET paper leak case where the NTA shies away from responsibility stating it reliance on outsiders for conducting the examinations.

This leads to larger concerns that public institutions may be becoming increasingly dependent on systems they do not fully control.

Many public institutions lack in-house technical expertise to independently evaluate such systems. As a result, governments may become structurally dependent on vendors not only for implementation, but also for technical interpretation and troubleshooting. This creates a form of technological asymmetry; the vendor understands the system more comprehensively than the institution deploying it.

The OSM controversy raises a broader policy question; should examination platforms be treated as ordinary administrative software, or as critical public infrastructure?