‘Pickpockets inside CBSE’: Rahul Gandhi attacks re-evaluation fee regime

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Monday sharpened his attack on the Centre and the CBSE over alleged irregularities in the board's re-evaluation process, accusing the education system of being "financialised" and claiming students are being forced to pay for mistakes they did not make.

Sharing a video of his interaction with Class 12 students affected by the CBSE's On-Screen Marking (OSM) system, Rahul Gandhi alleged that students are being charged hefty fees simply to verify whether their answer sheets were evaluated correctly.

"Beware of pickpockets — today, they are sitting right inside the CBSE," Rahul Gandhi said in a post on X.

"If your marks are incorrect due to a CBSE error, what do you get? A bill: Digital scanned copy: Rs 100 per subject. Re-totalling: Rs 100 per paper. Re-evaluation: Rs 25 per question."

The leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha claimed a student could end up spending nearly Rs 2,000 merely to ensure the accurate evaluation of an answer sheet.

"The mistake belongs to the CBSE. The punishment falls on the student. The profit goes to the government," Rahul Gandhi said, arguing that when education is treated as a business rather than a public service, "errors are not corrected — they are multiplied."

The controversy erupted after Class 12 student Vedant alleged on social media that the Physics answer sheet uploaded by CBSE under the re-evaluation process did not belong to him. The claim went viral, prompting several other students to report similar mismatches.

In the video, Rahul Gandhi is seen speaking with Vedant and other affected students, questioning the costs involved in the re-evaluation process and the functioning of the OSM system.

"This is what we are seeing not just in NEET, in CBSE, everywhere — you have financialised the education system," Rahul Gandhi said.

"The second is over-centralisation. If there is a problem, it becomes a critical failure of the entire system. In a decentralised system, one failure doesn't bring everything down."

The Congress leader also criticised the use of mobile phones for scanning answer sheets, claiming it increased the likelihood of evaluation errors while shifting the burden of correction onto students.

The CBSE has acknowledged concerns raised by students and said cases involving alleged mismatched answer sheets were being treated on "top priority". The Board later shared the correct answer sheets with affected students.

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

The issue has quickly snowballed into a political controversy, with Rahul Gandhi also targeting Coempt — the company involved in the OSM process — alleging that it had previously faced scrutiny under its former name, Globarena.

A day earlier, Rahul Gandhi had shared another video featuring the students, describing them as "brilliant, brave young Indians" who asked simple questions of the government but received "insults instead of answers".

"They deserve a bright and secure future. We will make sure they get it," he said.

With PTI inputs