Nagpur: The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) online portal for obtaining scanned copies of Class 12 answer books remained inaccessible throughout Wednesday. The snag drew sharp criticism from students who said login failures, payment errors and repeated crashes made it impossible to submit applications. Late evening, the portal was back online, and CBSE released data regarding the number of applications received.Students and parents vented anger on social media over the portal’s technical problems. Many complained that despite paying the fees, the portal kept prompting for payment. “The website is repeatedly failing during payment submission. Parents are already under stress and such poor service,” one user posted, demanding that CBSE extend the deadline. Another said more was expected of CBSE and called it “very poor service.“CBSE issued a circular in the morning acknowledging the technical glitch and said a team of experts was working to resolve it, with the portal expected to resume by 2pm. Students seeking scanned copies for grievance redressal were asked to apply once the portal came back, while those seeking archival copies were asked to wait until the re-evaluation process was completed.By 7.30pm, CBSE posted on X that the portal was functioning and that 1.27 lakh applications for 3.87 lakh scanned answer books had been submitted successfully within three hours. It cautioned that due to sudden traffic, some users may face temporary delays in payment status updates and asked students not to submit repeated requests.CBSE has already extended the original deadline of May 22 by one day, something that happened before the portal’s technical problems started.The scanned answer sheet facility has been under scrutiny this year following a nationwide uproar over allegations that improper scanning led to drops in student scores. The allegations prompted Union school education secretary Sanjay Kumar to hold a press conference asserting that the process was above board.
