DELHI — The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) implemented a new on-screen marking system for Class 12 exams, leading to widespread student complaints about missing pages, incorrect marking, and mismatched answer sheets. More than 400,000 students requested copies of their exam papers and answer sheets after results were released, amounting to 1.1 million individual requests from a pool of approximately 1.7 million examinees.
The on-screen marking (OSM) system, introduced just eight days before the exams began, involves scanning physical answer sheets and uploading them to an online portal for evaluation, with software calculating total marks. The CBSE stated the system was designed to reduce human error and increase efficiency.
Students quickly reported issues, including incomplete or blurry scans, incorrect marking, and answer sheets that did not match their handwriting or responses. Delhi student Vedant Srivastava posted on social media that the physics answer sheet sent to him was not his, citing different handwriting and answers he did not write. "I studied for an entire year. I sacrificed sleep, peace of mind, outings, everything for these exams. And now I don’t even know whether my actual physics paper was checked," Srivastava said.
Days after his complaint, the CBSE emailed Srivastava what it called the “correct copy” of his answer sheet. His post triggered a flood of similar reports from students sharing screenshots they said showed incorrect marking, missing pages, or papers that did not belong to them. Critic Geetu Moza questioned the impact of the errors, asking, "Do the authorities even understand what 30-35 marks can mean for a Class 12 student whose entire future and admission process depends on these scores? This is playing with the careers, mental health and future of thousands of students."
Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan acknowledged “some discrepancies” in the new marking system. "I take responsibility for this and assure you a solution will be found," Pradhan said.