The controversy surrounding the Central Board of Secondary Education’s (CBSE) On-Screen Marking (OSM) project has rapidly evolved into one of the most politically charged procurement debates in recent times. Opposition leaders, including Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and Arvind Kejriwal, have projected the project as a major scam involving alleged tender manipulation, favoritism, and irregularities in the award of contracts related to digital evaluation of answer sheets. Social media campaigns, political speeches, and activist commentary have amplified claims that the procurement process was deliberately altered to favour a private company.
However, a detailed examination of the available tender documents, pre-bid consultation records, technical evaluation proceedings, procurement conditions, litigation history, and project performance data presents a far more nuanced picture than the political narrative suggests. The central issue is not merely whether procedural modifications took place; they undoubtedly did. The real question is whether those modifications constituted evidence of corruption or were part of a routine recalibration process commonly seen in large-scale government technology procurements.
The CBSE OSM initiative emerged from the broader framework of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 and the Government of India’s Digital India programme. The objective was transformative: replacing traditional paper-based answer sheet evaluation with a nationwide digital assessment system capable of handling unprecedented examination volumes. CBSE itself described OSM as a major digital evaluation initiative intended to improve transparency, reduce clerical errors, and modernize the examination ecosystem. Nearly 98 lakh Class XII answer sheets were reportedly digitized and evaluated electronically, making it one of the largest digital examination assessment exercises attempted anywhere in the world.
The Procurement Debate
One of the most overlooked aspects of the controversy is the nature of the original tender issued in May 2025. According to procurement discussions and reports surrounding the project, the technical specifications initially prescribed by CBSE were reportedly so stringent that all participating bidders failed to qualify under the original conditions. Most significantly, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), one of India’s largest IT service providers, was also allegedly unable to satisfy the original technical requirements. Consequently, CBSE revised portions of the tender conditions and reissued the procurement process.
Critics interpreted these revisions as evidence of manipulation. However, procurement specialists argue that modifications to tender conditions are not uncommon in large government projects, particularly when initial technical requirements are found to be impractical, excessively restrictive, or inconsistent with prevailing market realities. In many public procurement systems, pre-bid consultations are specifically intended to gather industry feedback and refine eligibility conditions to ensure workable competition and successful implementation.
The most controversial allegation concerns CBSE’s decision to reduce the image scanning requirement from 300 DPI to 200 DPI. Opposition figures alleged that the change was designed to favour a specific vendor. However, procurement records and industry discussions reportedly indicate that the request for reducing the DPI requirement emerged during pre-bid consultations and was allegedly supported by multiple industry participants, including competing bidders. If accurate, this substantially weakens the argument that the modification was uniquely crafted to benefit a single company.
Additional changes cited by critics include the reduction of the Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) requirement from Level 5 to Level 3 and the reduction of the vendor cooling-off period from two years to one year. Procurement specialists, however, note that such conditions are often aligned with prevailing government procurement norms and are not inherently unusual in large-scale public technology tenders. The relatively limited market for nationwide digital examination evaluation systems further complicates the narrative that the process was intentionally designed to suppress competition.
Perhaps the strongest challenge to the “scam” narrative lies in the pricing outcome itself. According to available bid data, TCS reportedly quoted approximately ₹65 per answer sheet, whereas Coempt’s quoted price reportedly stood at approximately ₹24.75 per answer sheet, reflecting a reduction of nearly 62 percent compared to the competing bid. Traditionally, procurement scams are associated with inflated pricing, cartelization, or excessive burden on the public exchequer. In this case, however, the selected bid allegedly resulted in substantially lower projected expenditure for the government. Although lower pricing alone cannot conclusively establish procedural fairness, it undeniably complicates allegations that the procurement process was manipulated to facilitate inflated payments or confer undue financial advantage.
Another dimension frequently invoked by critics concerns legal proceedings involving Coempt in Telangana. Supporters of the procurement process point out that the matter eventually reached the Supreme Court, where the Special Leave Petition (SLP) was reportedly dismissed. They argue that continuing attempts to portray the company as legally discredited despite judicial proceedings raises questions about whether the controversy is driven primarily by legal concerns or political hostility. At the same time, dismissal of litigation does not automatically certify the complete integrity of a procurement process; it merely indicates that the courts did not find sufficient grounds to intervene.
Beyond the Political Narrative
Contrary to allegations that accountability standards were diluted, the contract reportedly incorporated stringent operational penalty provisions. One clause allegedly imposed penalties of ₹1 lakh for every fifteen-minute delay in rectifying identified issues. Reports further suggest that these penalties were not subject to the conventional liability caps commonly found in government technology contracts. If accurate, such provisions indicate that CBSE sought to impose strict accountability mechanisms on the service provider rather than dilute oversight.
The controversy has also reopened debate regarding the limitations of India’s traditional paper-based examination evaluation systems. Historically, examination boards have faced recurring challenges, including human calculation errors, missing or misplaced answer scripts, lack of transparency in evaluation, limited auditability of examiner decisions, and difficulties in tracking correction processes. CBSE’s official OSM documentation itself highlights that the digital system was intended to eliminate totaling errors, improve traceability, enhance secrecy, and reduce manual intervention. Supporters of digital evaluation argue that on-screen marking creates permanent audit trails, improves monitoring capability, and enhances transparency in the correction process.
Project performance figures cited by supporters indicate that approximately 98 lakh answer sheets were digitally evaluated, nearly 68,000 answer scripts underwent rescanning, and only a limited number of confirmed mismatches were identified. Advocates argue that the identification and correction of discrepancies demonstrates that monitoring systems functioned effectively rather than indicating systemic collapse. Critics, however, maintain that even a small number of discrepancies in a high-stakes national examination system deserves rigorous scrutiny.
At the same time, several genuine concerns surrounding implementation have also emerged. Reports of blurred answer sheets, missing pages, portal glitches, payment gateway failures, and alleged answer sheet mismatches triggered widespread student complaints after the declaration of results. CBSE subsequently acknowledged technical discrepancies and assured corrective measures. The board also clarified that certain alleged “hacking” incidents involved only testing portals containing dummy data and not the actual evaluation system.
Opposition leaders additionally pointed to issues identified during the January 2026 pilot exercise as evidence of project failure. Yet CBSE’s own documentation indicates that dry runs and mock evaluations were specifically designed to identify operational weaknesses before nationwide implementation. The Board stated that multiple technical and workflow-related issues identified during pilot testing were subsequently corrected prior to full-scale rollout. From a project management perspective, identifying and rectifying deficiencies during pilot testing is generally regarded as evidence of functioning quality-control mechanisms rather than proof of systemic failure.
In the final analysis, the presently available evidence suggests that the controversy surrounding the CBSE OSM project is considerably more complex than the simplistic “scam” narrative dominating political discourse. Multiple facts stand out: all bidders reportedly failed the original technical specifications; tender modifications appear to have followed industry consultations; the controversial DPI reduction was allegedly supported during pre-bid discussions; the winning bid substantially reduced projected public expenditure; strong penalty clauses reportedly remained intact; and the project itself was implemented at unprecedented national scale.
None of this implies that the procurement process should be exempt from scrutiny. Large public contracts involving sensitive educational infrastructure must always remain open to independent oversight, transparency, and institutional accountability. Nevertheless, the material presently available indicates that the controversy may be less about a conclusively established procurement scam and more about competing interpretations of a highly complex digital transformation exercise unfolding within a politically polarized environment.
Ultimately, the long-term judgment on the CBSE OSM project will not be determined by political slogans or social media outrage, but by whether the system ultimately delivers greater transparency, efficiency, reliability, and fairness for millions of students across India.
Source: Compiled based on publicly available inputs and analysis shared by Shri Himanshu Jain on X:
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