Opposition leaders from Congress and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) have slammed the Indian government for the recent CBSE marking system chaos. Indian National Congress’ K C Venugopal has now written to the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi alleging “catastrophic discrepancies” in the new CBSE On-Screen Marking (OSM) evaluation system for Class 12.
In his letter dated May 26, Venugopal claimed that students across India and Gulf countries were facing severe issues due to the digital evaluation process. He alleged that several students were awarded zero despite writing correct answers, while many received blurred or illegible scanned answer sheets after paying verification fees.
“As you are aware, the primary concern stems from the newly implemented digital scanning and on-screen evaluation process, which has proven to be highly erratic and deeply flawed. Students have reported massive, unprecedented discrepancies in marking, with instances where students who wrote correct answers have been awarded zero marks,” he stated in his letter. “To make matters worse, those who paid to receive scanned copies of their evaluated scripts are receiving blurred, cropped, or entirely illegible documents, making it virtually impossible for them to review their performance or verify their actual grades.”
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“For instance, upon retrieving the Physics answer sheet, one student discovered that the handwriting and the writing style were completely not his own, indicating a shocking mix-up of answer sheets. And while he shared the mismatched answer sheet publicly and pleaded for help, the student was met with vile abuse. Furthermore, unequal difficulty levels across different paper sets have left many students at a severe disadvantage, leading to a justified demand for standard grace marks to normalize final scores,” he shared an example of a student.
He also talked about how the post-result verification portal “has completely collapsed under pressure, causing immense panic and harassment”.
Venugopal is not the only leader to raise questions against the education system. Arvind Kejriwal, former Chief Minister of Delhi, and the national convener of the Aam Aadmi Party also raised question over other alleged examination discrepancies too.
“NEET, after CBSE Class 12th, now reports of irregularities are coming from many places in SSC GD as well,” he tweeted. “Complaints are coming from many places that there was a server malfunction, and at many exam centers, more children were called than the capacity. What kind of government is this? One that can’t even conduct a single paper properly?”
“The mafia has completely taken over the education system of the entire country. The future of millions of children and youth is being traded away. This is exactly how the education mafia is thriving. There are two people at the top who are providing them protection. If you want to secure your own future, you’ll have to take some action yourself,” he added.
AAP is still demanding Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation. “Neither is the Education Minister’s resignation being demanded from you, nor are the examinations being conducted with honesty. The youth of the country is asking – when you can’t even manage the system, why don’t you just step down from the chair?,” Manish Sisodia tweeted.
Former NSUI President Varun Chaudhary has also raised Vedant’s example (the student whose answer sheet was swapped with other student’s sheet — an error CBSE admitted later). “Questions have been raised over CBSE for several days now. If you open CBSE’s Twitter or social media accounts, the comment sections are filled with complaints from students saying they are not getting any response. Over the last two to three days, a case involving a student named Vidhan came to light. CBSE itself admitted within two to three hours that it was their mistake and that the student had been given the wrong sheet. Despite several such cases, the first thing CBSE should do is immediately extend the re-evaluation deadline of May 25 by at least 10 days, because complaints from thousands of students are now emerging. So, my clear demand to the Education Minister and CBSE is that the re-evaluation deadline, which ended yesterday, should be extended by at least 10 days…” he told PTI.