“People think I am smart, but I am just ordinary. I was just tracking everything,” says 18-year-old Sarthak Sidhant, who has only recently finished school.

Interested in coding, artificial intelligence and robotics, Sarthak has unexpectedly found himself at the centre of a controversy after his blog post on alleged irregularities in a CBSE tender process drew national attention. In many ways, the work he did resembled the kind of investigative digging often associated with professional journalists.

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Like good journalists, he turned his attention to the tender process of the CBSE on May 22 once it became known that the On Screen Marking system introduced this year had many glitches. Sarthak wanted to dig into the vendor selection process. His work has brought the CBSE to its knees and the government formally thanked him and his cohorts who have uncovered major irregularities.

An inspired effort

Originally from Bokaro, Jharkhand, Sarthak grew up with his parents and younger brother. His parents, both computer engineers by training who later moved into the education sector, now live in Ranchi.

His fascination with technology began early. Sarthak had access to computers from age as young as 3 and quickly developed an intuitive understanding of how they worked. Sarthak credits his late father for the motivation.

“In Class 6, I realised that I could teach myself coding from the internet,” Sarthak says. With little formal training, he began learning programming on his own through online resources, spending hours experimenting and building projects.

Despite the attention his blog has received, Sarthak says he was never particularly active on social media. That changed after a post about his findings went viral. “Now I am answering calls, replying to comments and speaking to media organisations. It is tiring,” he said.

The sudden spotlight has also affected his family. “It was overwhelming for my mother too,” he adds.

Asked how he is handling the newfound popularity, Sarthak says the attention has significantly altered his routine over the past few days. “The last two days have been exhausting and busy,” he says.

When asked how his friends are liking it and if there are any charters about his fame in the school, he said: “My friends are happy and very supportive. They are wondering how all this came out of the blue.”

Until May 20, Sarthak kept himself with what many 18-year-olds too -- fun tech projects among them. “I just wanted to know who the tender was given to, what the company was and what its background was,” he says.

And the process of uncovering the information was no different from any other research exercise. Looking through documents, tracing information and connecting details felt routine rather than remarkable.

Sarthak appears unconvinced by the label of investigative journalism. He says he was simply trying to answer a question that interested him. Sarthak sees it as a straightforward attempt to gather information and place it in the public domain.

Sarthak says he has several journalist friends online and often discusses public-interest issues with them. He lists his collaborators in the work: Nisarga, Aviral, Trideep, Harshvardhan, Sanjay Maurya.

Just extraordinary

While he is “sort of” interested in journalism, he sees his future in civic technology — using technology to improve transparency and public accountability.

He is currently working on what he describes as a “Tender Aggregator and Accountability Engine”, a platform that allows users to access and analyse tender-related information more easily.

Beyond coding and technology, Sarthak enjoys listening to shayari and mushairas, plays the popular video game Minecraft, and is fond of poetry.

For someone who insists he is “just ordinary”, Sarthak’s curiosity and persistence have already placed him in an extraordinary spotlight.