The development followed a week of students flagging discrepancies in terms of mismatch of scanned answer sheets against their roll numbers, inaccurate scoring process and missing pages in scanned answerbooks among others. | Photo Credit: KRISHNAN VV

The government on Tuesday transferred Rahul Singh, Chairman, Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) and the Board’s Secretary Himanshu Gupta in the wake of widespread concerns over irregularities in digital evaluation system of the Class 12th Board Exam. The government has also set up a one-member committee to look into the procurement process adopted by the CBSE for services of On-Screen Marking System.

In an official notification, the government named Lokhande Prashant Sitaram as the new Chairperson. It added that Singh has been appointed as Additional Secretary, Department of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare.

The development followed a week of students flagging discrepancies in terms of mismatch of scanned answer sheets against their roll numbers, inaccurate scoring process and missing pages in scanned answerbooks among others. At the same time, cybersecurity researchers and ethical hackers revealed several critical vulnerabilities in the On Mark Portal. Discrepancies in the manner the OSM contract was awarded to Contempt Edu Teck had also surfaced.

According to an official notification, the government has set up a one-member committee chaired by S. Radha Chauhan, Chairperson of Capacity Building Commission to “inquire into matters relating to procurement of services for On-Screen Marking System by CBSE.” The committee has been asked to submit its report within a month to Department of Personnel & Training.

Reacting to the developments, Congress Leader Rahul Gandhi in a post on X said, “ This isn’t accountability—it’s a cover-up. Our demand remains the same today: Dismiss the Education Minister and conduct an independent judicial inquiry—these aren’t some one-month-old internal file of the Modi government to be brushed aside just like that. If the Prime Minister cared about the 18.5 million CBSE students—Dharmendra Pradhan ji would have been removed long ago.”

Facing criticism

The board has also now been facing criticism over technical glitches, payment failures and delays in the verification and re-evaluation process. Infact the portal for verification and re-evaluation process was earlier slated to go live on May 29 but was postponed till June 1. Eventually, it only got operationalised in the early morning hours on Tuesday.

In the afternoon, CBSE said that attempts were made to disrupt the portal’s operations. “ The CBSE revaluation portal is currently supporting over 8,000 concurrent users. As of 3:00 PM today (Tuesday), more than 16,000 students have successfully completed their submissions. While thousands of students accessed the CBSE re-evaluation portal today, malicious actors attempted to disrupt services through a barrage of cyberattacks. Most recent being a denial of service attack attempt causing 1.5 million hits on the portal within a matter of 2 minutes and more than 1 lakh attempts of unauthorised file access,” it said in a post on X.

“Based on student feedback, we have further refined the platform, including extending session time limits to make the process more convenient and seamless. Our teams remain vigilant and responsive to ensure our dearest students are facilitated in all ways possible,” it added.

Meanwhile, Parliamentary Standing Committee on Education, Women, Children, Youth & Sports met for the second day under Congress MP Digvijay Singh’s chairmanship to discuss the use of the OSM system in CBSE Class 12 board examinations and concerns that emerged following its rollout among other issues. One of the students , Sarthak Sidhant, who in a blogpost has alleged that rules, terms and conditions were rewritten to favour Coempt Edu Teck, also presented his findings to the panel.

Published on June 2, 2026