Congress attacks Centre over alleged irregularities in CBSE’s digital marking system

The Congress on Monday intensified its attack on the Centre and Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan over alleged irregularities in the Central Board of Secondary Education’s newly introduced On-Screen Marking (OSM) system for Class 12 board examinations.

Congress leader and Rajya Sabha MP Jairam Ramesh accused the government of mishandling the digital evaluation process, claiming it had created uncertainty for lakhs of students and disrupted academic outcomes across the country.

In a post on X, Ramesh alleged that the rollout of the OSM system had “thrown into chaos the academic futures of lakhs of children” and raised serious concerns about the functioning of the CBSE.

He claimed that the Class 12 pass percentage had fallen from 88 per cent last year to 85 per cent this year and alleged that the evaluation process was marred by multiple irregularities.

According to the Congress leader, students and evaluators faced issues including blurred and illegible scanned answer sheets, incorrect allocation of scripts, errors in marking, delays in payments to teachers and high revaluation fees.

The OSM system, introduced by CBSE this year, involves scanning physical answer sheets, digitally masking student identities and allowing teachers to evaluate scripts on computer screens.

Targeting Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan, Ramesh accused him of responding only after concerns had escalated publicly.

He criticised the minister for portraying himself as attempting to resolve the issue after technical problems emerged and questioned why the education ministry and CBSE had failed to anticipate implementation challenges before introducing the system nationwide.

Ramesh also referred to reports that IIT Kanpur had been brought in to assist with technical issues linked to the evaluation process.

Sharpening his criticism, the Congress leader said the education minister should resign over what he described as “institutional collapse” and accused the government of jeopardising students’ futures through administrative failures.

The Centre and CBSE have not yet issued a detailed response to the allegations.

With IANS inputs