‘Follow rajdharma, resign’: Congress targets Dharmendra Pradhan over CBSE row

The Congress on Monday intensified its offensive against the Centre over the CBSE's On-Screen Marking (OSM) controversy, demanding education minister Dharmendra Pradhan's resignation and alleging serious irregularities in the awarding and oversight of the digital evaluation system.

Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh accused the government of shielding Coempt, the company responsible for the OSM process, after reports suggested that the CBSE had acknowledged vulnerabilities in the system following complaints from students.

"After denying the cybersecurity vulnerabilities in its On-Screen Marking system for weeks, the CBSE has finally acknowledged that the system has been compromised. But what action is it planning to take against its contractor COEMPT? Not much," Ramesh said in a post on X.

The Congress leader alleged that the CBSE had diluted its own powers to blacklist underperforming vendors before awarding the contract.

"In its August 2025 RFP, the CBSE retained the power to blacklist vendors who failed to deliver effectively. A corrigendum issued a month later removed that provision. This is an inexplicable, government-backed attempt to save COEMPT, and it began even before COEMPT got the contract officially," he claimed.

Taking a swipe at education minister Dharmendra Pradhan, Ramesh questioned how long the country would have to tolerate what he called administrative failures that had affected lakhs of students.

"Mantri Pradhan is the very epitome of arrogance and incompetence, insistent on putting his political agenda above and beyond any responsibility to the nation," he alleged.

"The Pradhan Mantri has never been known to hold himself or his colleagues to any standard of probity or morality. But the Mantri Pradhan should follow his rajdharma and resign," Ramesh said.

The remarks come a day after Congress leader Rahul Gandhi attacked the government's handling of the CBSE re-evaluation process, accusing it of turning education into a business and forcing students to pay for errors committed by the system.

The controversy erupted after several CBSE Class 12 students reported receiving scanned answer sheets that allegedly belonged to other candidates while applying for re-evaluation. One such complaint by a student named Vedant gained widespread attention on social media, prompting more students to come forward with similar claims.

The CBSE subsequently contacted affected students and provided the correct answer sheets. The Board said cases involving mismatched answer sheets and other re-evaluation issues were being handled on "top priority".

According to government sources, experts from IIT Madras, IIT Kanpur and the Digital Infrastructure Corporation of India (DICI) are reviewing the system and strengthening the portal and payment gateway integration.

Coempt, which handled the OSM process, has come under sustained criticism from the Congress, with Rahul Gandhi alleging that the company had previously been embroiled in controversy under its former name, Globarena.

As the political battle over the OSM row intensifies, the opposition is seeking to portray the issue as a wider failure of governance and accountability in the country's education system, while the CBSE maintains that corrective measures are underway.

With PTI inputs