CBSE OSM row: Student's findings show tender process 'rigged'

New Delhi: A student’s allegations of the easing of norms to grant the tenders for implementing out the Onscreen Marking system in the Class 12 board exams of the Central Board of Secondary Education to Coempt Edu Teck by has led to senior Opposition leaders training the guns on the government yet again. 

Sarthak Sidhant, a student who wrote the Class 12 exams, has pointed at documents on the CBSE site which show that conditions for technical competencies were changed so that Coempt Edu Teck could be granted the contract. 

Alleging that the CBSE “rigged” the process, Sarthak showed documents from the tendering process to show that the first tender was floated in February 2025, and while the request for proposal (RFP) exists, there is no archive of this tender in the Governance e-Marketplace site.

The same tender was once again floated in May 2024 with the same RFP, and four companies made the bid, including Coempt and Tata Consultancy Services. As all the four failed technical checks, this tender, too, was cancelled. 

In August 2025, CBSE released the third tender, where Coempt, TCS and another company, RankGuru, bid. This tender was won by Coempt.

In the third bid, conditions were tweaked. In the first and second tenders, three preconditions were that if a company made misleading claims in the forms, or has a record of poor performance, or if any documented inquiry reveals facts contrary to the information provided, the company will be disqualified.

The new RFP made for the third bid made no mention of “poor performance”.

Coempt Edu Teck is the new name for a company called Globarena, which was in the dock in 2019 for messing up the answer sheets of lakhs of students in Telangana, which led to 23 suicides. 

"CBSE mandated a Rs 50 Cr annual average turnover from exam services. Smaller debt-free firms asked to lower it to Rs 30 Cr to promote competition. CBSE refused. What was Coempt's 3-year average? Rs 50.86 Cr qualified by 1.7 per cent,” Sarthak posted. 

The old RFP also required the company with past projects involving 5 lakh students, but the new one switched to cumulative volume of answer booklets. Similarly, while a vendor was required to have their own data centres and Disaster Recovery Centre in the old RFP, in the new one, none was needed.

Additionally, in the old RFP, the bidder needed to own or have rights to access the complete source code, which was changed to the option to use Proprietary Software in the revised RFP. 

He said CBSE should answer my questions. “I have raised important questions through my blog. I hope CBSE will ensure transparency over the tender system. I hope the Government of India also ensures that the tender system, the procurement websites, all are transparent, the data should be easily downloadable, and the more journalists, the more media houses should report on this,” he told ANI. 

Not dismissing the OSM method, Sarthak said that there were no good pilots, and it was not extensively tested. “I think it should be implemented properly. Anything, any system you implement should be implemented properly,” he added.

Hailing Sarthak, Rahul Gandhi said that these findings reveal how CBSE changed the RFP to “unduly benefit” Coempt. “He has revealed the hollowness of 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. Sarthak’s work shows that India’s Gen Z is brilliant and fearless. And sooner or later, they will find out the full truth,” Gandhi said.