- Rahul Singh and Himanshu Gupta have been transferred amid controversy over CBSE's On-screen Marking System
- A one-member committee led by Ms S Radha Chauhan will probe the OSM procurement process
- Irregularities include answer sheet mix-ups, evaluation errors, and misallocated grades
The Chairman and Secretary of the Central Board of Secondary Education -- Rahul Singh and Himanshu Gupta -- have been transferred following the huge controversy over the newly introduced On-screen Marking System or OSM. Their removal came amid the CBSE's process for declaring examination results as the CBSE continues to face massive embarrassment over the changes in the tender process for OSM.
A panel has also been formed to probe the procurement of on-screen marking services. The One-Member Committee will be chaired by Ms S Radha Chauhan, Chairperson, Capacity Building Commission. The Committee will submit its report within a month to the Department of Personnel & Training.
The irregularities included a series of trouble spots including mix-up of answer sheets, evaluation errors, faulty checking, and misallocation of grades.
Students who requested scanned copies of their answer sheets found that the uploaded copies did not belong to them.
The CBSE officials have acknowledged that around 20 cases of answer-sheet mismatches had been identified during the evaluation process.
Students and cybersecurity experts have also pointed to technical issues -- including weakness and loopholes in the site. The evaluation portal has also experienced payment failures and issued severely blurred or missing pages.
The CBSE had launched a portal to address cybersecurity concerns surrounding the OnMark portal operated by its service provider. On Sunday, the board said it had deployed a team of cybersecurity experts from various government agencies and the Indian Institutes of Technology to strengthen the platform's security infrastructure. The portal will remain till midnight on June 6, 2026.
What is the Tender Controversy
The CBSE had awarded the contract for Digital Scanning and On-Screen Evaluation (OSM) system to Hyderabad-based Coempt Edu Teck. They were to handle the scanning and digital evaluation of lakhs of answer sheets. The tender process came under scrutiny after concerns were raised about the OSM system.
Documents accessed from the tender process show when the CBSE first floated the tender on August 28, 2025, it included a strong enforcement mechanism. The tender empowered a CBSE committee to recommend forfeiture of Performance Bank Guarantee (PBG), blacklisting of the vendor and termination of the contract in case of serious violations.
What The Final Contract Allowed
Under the final six-page contract, the vendor can face steep financial penalties and even termination, but they cannot be blacklisted. The contract imposed a Rs 1 lakh penalty for every 15-minute delay in resolving critical issues flagged by the CBSE. There will be a Rs 1 lakh penalty for every 60-minute delay in failure to submit a root-cause analysis and corrective action plan.
The agreement also allowed CBSE to forfeit security deposits and terminate the contract in serious cases.
Ripples In Parliament
Today's action came after the matter was raised in Parliament. Congress's Rahul Gandhi and other Opposition leaders have accused the CBSE and the government of fraud, citing blurred answer sheets, mobile phone scanning, and student data breaches.
The Standing Committee on Education had summoned CBSE officials and the Education Secretary to address the evaluation discrepancies and high re-evaluation fees.
Today, Sarthak Sidhant, a 17-year-old student from Jharkhand affected by the CBSE's online marking system, made a presentation before a parliamentary panel on the alleged irregularities in the tendering process.
He pointed out the anomalies in the CBSE tendering process to select venders and put forth a set of questions for the board, reported news agency Press Trust of India.
