A blog post by a Class 12 student from Jharkhand has become the focal point of a nationwide political controversy over the Central Board of Secondary Education’s (CBSE) On-Screen Marking (OSM) system. It has drawn responses from the Leader of the Opposition, the Aam Aadmi Party chief, and other senior leaders and activists and citizens , prompting the CBSE to defend its procurement process.
Sarthak Sidhant, 17, published his findings at on his website, sarthaksidhant.com/coempt, after spending several days reviewing tender documents on the Central Public Procurement portal. This came after a fall in CBSE pass percentage led to questions over the OSM system, and some students reported errors and mix-ups.
Sidhant’s blog, titled ‘How CBSE rewrote rules to favour Coempt EduTeck’, alleges that the board systematically modified eligibility and technical requirements across three successive tender rounds in a manner that benefited the eventual winning vendor, Hyderabad-based Coempt EduTeck Private Limited.
“This is a story of how a massive public institution deliberately played with students’ futures by rewriting its own rulebook,” Sidhant wrote in his blog’s opening.
The company has denied any wrongdoing, as has the CBSE.
The student behind the blog
Sidhant describes himself simply as “one of the 17 lakh students affected by the On Screen Marking system”. Dissatisfied with his results, he had received blurred, incomplete scans of his answer sheets, he said.
He spent the days that followed cross-referencing CBSE’s official bidding documents on the public procurement portal, tracking changes across three versions of the tender. Speaking to news agency ANI from Ranchi, he said: “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.”
What the blog alleges
Sidhant’s central allegation is that the technical and eligibility bar for the OSM contract was progressively lowered across three tender rounds in the Request for Proposal, until Coempt EduTeck could qualify. He said several specific modifications appear to have been calibrated to the company’s profile.
“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?” he said.
On the company turnover threshold , he said: “The ₹50-crore limit, which you needed to qualify — Coempt qualified that by 1.7%.”
He also alleged that “the timeframe of corrupt practices was halved” and that project criteria were changed in ways that disadvantaged larger vendors. “It shows a pattern that the industry giant TCS was not preferred, but Coempt was preferred, which works as a very fragmented group of institutions,” he told ANI.
Leader of Opposition and Congress MP Rahul Gandhi shared this blog on X.
‘Gen Z is brilliant and fearless’
“[Sidhant] has revealed the hollowness of (education minister) 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,” he wrote.
He added, “Sarthak’s work shows that India’s Gen Z is brilliant and fearless. And sooner or later, they will find out the full truth.”
Earlier, Gandhi shared a Hindustan Times investigation that had separately documented technical changes between the tender rounds. The mandatory Capability Maturity Model Integration certification — an internationally recognised measure of software process maturity — was lowered from Level 5, the highest tier, to Level 3.
The minimum scanning resolution was reduced from “300 DPI and above” to “minimum 200 DPI with clearly readable content”. TCS had, during pre-bid consultations, urged the CBSE to lower the threshold to 150, arguing it would provide “adequately clear visibility”. CBSE did not act on the suggestion in May 2025, but adopted a relaxed standard of 200 DPI by August.
What CBSE has said
CBSE officials have said the board followed procurement protocols “scrupulously” and that the contract was awarded to the lowest qualified bidder under the quality-cum-cost based selection framework.
A senior board official told HT the modifications should “not be seen as a rushed exercise, but as a process of correcting shortcomings from earlier rounds to achieve better results”. A second CBSE official said the company “was not blacklisted by any government agency and nobody had raised any concern regarding it”.
Coempt and its history
Coempt EduTeck won the contract as the lowest financial bidder.
The company was formerly known as Globarena Technologies, the software firm associated with the 2019 Telangana Intermediate board examination controversy. VSN Raju, CEO of Coempt EduTeck, has said: “We changed our name, all our clients know this, and I am still the CEO. We are not hiding.” He said the courts had cleared the company in litigation related to the Telangana row.
On the CBSE’s OSM rollout, Raju said it was “absolutely wrong” to say the system has widespread errors, and described complaints as “one of its kind”. He pointedly attributed the case of Delhi student Vedant Shrivastava — who received an answer sheet belonging to a different student — to human error during scanning rather than any technological failure.
The CBSE’s own figures showed show that of 9,866,622 (98.6 lakh) answer books evaluated, 68,018 required rescanning due to poor image quality and 13,583 were checked manually after repeated scanning failed to produce legible copies.
The political response
Sidhant’s blog was substantially amplified by senior political figures across party lines. Rahul Gandhi posted the blog and wrote: “The futures of 18.5 lakh children were handed to a company that could only qualify after the rules were bent for it.”
He demanded a judicial investigation. He alleged that PM Narendra Modi “ruined” the country’s education system; and questioned his silence.
BJP national spokesperson Gaurav Bhatia, however, accused Gandhi of attempting to paint Coempt as controversial while ignoring that state universities in Congress and non-NDA-ruled states had also hired the same firm.
The CBSE OSM controversy, in fact, arrived at a fraught moment for the government-run exam system, just days after the NEET-UG medical entrance examination was cancelled after a paper leak. The National Testing Agency faced more heat on Saturday after a technical glitch delayed the CUET-UG 2026 at several examination centres.
AAP national convenor Arvind Kejriwal also asked his followers on X to read Sidhant’s blog, writing that it showed how the “Modi govt changed several rules to give OSM contract to this shady company which ruined the future of lakhs of students”. TMC MP and journalist Sagarika Ghose described the blog as “remarkable, detailed and evidence-based”.
So far, education minister Dharmendra Pradhan has said he takes “full responsibility”. The CBSE is now opening its re-evaluation portal from June 1, after some delay.
The government has acknowledging exam-related friction, and officials have said no payment has been released to Coempt EduTeck so far. A CBSE official said penalties would be “reviewed after completion of the re-evaluation process and supplementary examinations”. TCS has not issued any public statement on the matter.
