Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan on Thursday acknowledged that “some discrepancies had been noticed” in the CBSE Class 12 exam results, saying he takes “responsibility for it” as this was the first time the Board had implemented the on-screen marking (OSM) system on such a large scale.
“Certain discrepancies have come to our notice, and I take responsibility for them. These issues will be rectified, and appropriate solutions will be worked out. We are all working on this. We will not leave any student’s question unresolved,” Pradhan said after a review meeting at the CBSE headquarters in Delhi.
The minister’s statement came a day after Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi alleged there was “massive tampering” in the Class 12 results, and that the company that CBSE chose for OSM — Coempt Edu Teck — “had already pulled off the same deed in Telangana in 2019” under a different name.
Responding to Gandhi’s claims, Pradhan said: “It has been done (the choice of company) as per the government’s procurement policy. I assure…if something has gone wrong, we will not spare anybody. Rahul Gandhi is frustrated after repeatedly losing elections. He opposed SIR, he opposed EVMs, he opposed digital India. He is not with the scientific advancement of the country… I request him…this is not the time for politics. Students’ mental stress shouldn’t increase with anybody’s behaviour or words…”
Replying to the minister, Gandhi said, “You can attack me all you want but it won’t absolve you of your crimes. Nor will it stop me from demanding answers for 18.5 lakh children.”
The Congress MP asked why no background checks were done before the contract was handed to the company. “What is the connection between Coempt’s management and the Modi government? Either you ran a background check and went ahead anyway — or you didn’t run one at all. Either way, you are complicit. As for responsibility — if the PM cared, he should have sacked you long ago for ruining the futures of lakhs of students.”
Pradhan maintained that the OSM is a “progressive instrument” that is “student-centric”, and “other institutions and universities in the country and the world are progressing towards it”.
“CBSE has begun the revaluation process for the Class 12 examinations. Around 17 lakh students took part, with nearly 98 lakh answer copies – about 40 crore scanned pages in total,” Pradhan said, underlining the scale of the exercise.
“It is student-centric…they can get information about their marks in a transparent manner. They can transparently get their answer sheets in scanned form. Their questions…whether they have got less or more, or something has been missed…to give information on all this, this facility of OSM is there,” Pradhan said.
CBSE introduced OSM for the Class 12 board exams this year – around 98 lakh answer books were marked digitally by evaluators. The Class 12 pass percentage fell from 88.39% last year to 85.29% this year. With concerns raised over the scores this year, the Board slashed the cost to obtain scanned copies of answer books; it received over 4.04 lakh applications to obtain scanned copies of answer books, well over the 1.31 lakh applications received last year.
Based on their answer book copies, students can apply for verification of marks and re-evaluation – a process that has not begun yet. The Board faced technical glitches with its post-result services portal where students were applying for copies of their answer books. These issues are being fixed in collaboration with experts from IIT-Madras and IIT-Kanpur before the portal is made available for re-evaluation and verification applications.
“Along with transparency, it is a question of ensuring quality. There is scope for improvement in this. The discrepancies that were found…on such a large scale it was organised…over 40 crore sheets were scanned. Of the 17 lakh students (who gave the exam), 4 lakh students have come back to ask for their answer sheets. Around 11 lakh copies have gone to them…for the problems that arose, we take responsibility. We express regret,” Pradhan said. He said “if somebody is intentionally responsible, we will not spare them, whether it is within the CBSE or outside, or within the government”. He said, “We are all accountable. We are not running from anything.”
The Board has maintained that the OSM portal, which was used for evaluation of answer books, was not “compromised”. While a social media post had flagged vulnerabilities in the OSM portal, the Board has refuted this on the grounds that the user who raised the issue had accessed a “testing site” with sample data.
