File Photo:  IIT-M director V. Kamakoti  | Photo Credit: BIJOY GHOSH

As reports emerge of tech glitches and poor access controls in the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE’s) On screen marking (OSM) system, a team from the Indian Institute of Technology (Madras) is currently in Delhi undertaking a complete “third-party health check-up of the website.”

A team from IIT-M is now in Delhi working with CBSE on understanding and evaluating their tech platform, and we will soon get more clarity on where things went wrong, IIT-M director V. Kamakoti said on Tuesday.

As concerns are raised by students and parents regarding the CBSE’s post-result services portal, Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan announced earlier that a team of professors and experts from IIT-M and IIT- Kanpur will be assisting the CBSE in rectifying the issue.

“There is a requirement of a third-party audit. They [CBSE] are also fighting against time because only if this is released, can students take the next steps for JEE and other admissions,” Kamakoti said. “It is still not clear whether it was a case of cyber attack or that the system was unable to take the load of a large number of people. We have sent our team, they will do an analysis and get back with a report,” he added.

We have to understand how deep the issue goes, the IIT-M director said, adding that it is tough to set a time frame for the exercise at this stage. “It is a fairly complex site, there are many layers,” he said.

In the OSM system, instead of traditionally correcting physical copies of answer sheets, the evaluators check the scanned answer sheets on screens.

However, the implementation of this large-scale initiative has been a problem as Class 12 students and parents have been complaining about wrong tagging of papers, and students have also faced glitches in the payment gateways when they apply for re-evaluation.

Kamakoti said the on screen marking and digitising is a good move by CBSE as the answer scripts once scanned can be evaluated pan-India, ensuring there is no bias in correction. It also makes the re-evaluation transparent and is easier for students and parents to assess their performance by seeing digital snapshots of their papers, he added.

Published on May 26, 2026