Hacking claims, mismatched answer-sheets: Controversies rock school exam in India

What began as one student’s viral complaint about a mismatch between the physical and digital copies of his Grade 12 physics answer sheet has snowballed into a major controversy around one of India’s biggest and most important school-leaving exams.

Days after the government-run Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) announced its Grade 12 – equivalent to UK’s A level – results, dozens of students complained about errors in their marks allegedly linked to a newly-launched digital evaluation system used in the exam.

Called On-Screen Marking (OSM), the system works by scanning physical copies of answer-sheets and uploading them on an online portal for teachers to evaluate.

A software then calculates total marks in each exam. According to the education board, the system was introduced to reduce human error and effort and to increase transparency and efficiency.

While students often reported errors in manual evaluation, they say the new system has caused new problems instead of fixing old ones. Some say the scanned copies of answer sheets were blurry, which may have affected marks. Others say pages were missing, answers were marked wrongly, or the digital copies did not match the original paper answer sheets.

CBSE has responded to the allegations by saying that it remained committed to a “fair and transparent evaluation process”.

“All genuine concerns related to scanned answer books or evaluation will be reviewed by subject experts through the prescribed mechanism,” it said.

On Thursday, federal Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said that it was the first time that the CBSE was using OSM, which he described as a “student-centric” and “globally accepted” system. He also acknowledged that “some discrepancies [in the results] had come to light”.

“I take responsibility for this and assure you that a solution will be found. We are working on it. We will not leave any student’s query unaddressed,” he said.

The students’ complaints have sparked national outrage and brought the education board’s digital evaluation system under the scanner.

Parents and educationists have questioned whether teachers received enough training and proper technology to run the new marking system effectively.

For millions of Indian students, CBSE exams are not just tests – they are gateways to college admissions, careers and social mobility.

CBSE is also one of the country’s largest education boards, with about two million students taking the Grade 12 exam this year. India also has state-run, private and international school boards.

Another reason why this issue has made national headlines is because it comes on the back of a controversy surrounding another crucial exam – the National Eligibility Entrance Test (Undergraduate), known as NEET-UG – which is the gateway to studying medicine in India.

Allegations of a paper leak in May led to the exam being cancelled, impacting nearly 2.28 million candidates who wrote the test, and leading to a spate of alleged suicides.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of neglecting the country’s youth. He also demanded the education minister’s resignation over the controversies, alleging the system was rigged and students had to turn to social media for justice.

Pradhan has accused Gandhi of not supporting India’s “scientific progress” and accused him of playing political games.

On X, Gandhi highlighted the case of Vedant Srivastava, a CBSE student who alleged his answer sheet had been swapped.

Srivastava said on X that after seeking a re-evaluation of his physics paper, he found the scanned copy shared by CBSE was not his, citing different handwriting and answers to questions he had not attempted.

“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. Do students really deserve this?” he wrote.

His post went viral, triggering a wave of similar complaints from other students. Many shared screenshots that appeared to show mismatched answer sheets and incorrect marking.

On Monday, CBSE said it had emailed Srivastava the “correct copy” of his answer sheet, without explaining the alleged mismatch. Screenshots the student then shared appeared to show manual marking in red ink, unlike the green tick marks used in the digital evaluation system.

According to the education board, as of Tuesday, more than 400,000 students had applied for scanned copies of their answer-sheets and about 1.1 million had requested physical copies.

Some students complained that they faced technical glitches while applying for copies of their answer sheets, prompting Pradhan to send a team of experts from India’s top technology colleges to assist CBSE in ensuring a “glitch-free re-evaluation process”.

Students have also raised concerns about the security of the exam portal after another CBSE student claimed he hacked into it in February and was able to access evaluators’ accounts.

Nisarga Adhikary, who describes himself as an “ethical hacker”, told the BBC he was able to crack the master password for the system, gaining access to student records, answer sheets and evaluators’ accounts.

“With that kind of access, one can tamper with the answer-sheets, change marks or even access peoples’ phone numbers and bank details,” he alleged.

Adhikary said he flagged around six-to-seven security vulnerabilities he perceived in the portal to India’s Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-IN) – a federal agency that deals with cyber-security incidents – in a series of emails, which the BBC has seen. Adhikary has also posted his findings on his X account and blog.

On Tuesday, CBSE denied the allegations, claiming that “no security breaches have come to light on the portal deployed for the actual evaluation work”.

It added that the URL flagged as being compromised was a “testing site” and that “no actual evaluation data, marks or other data [were] held on that portal”.

However, Adhikary claims that after logging into the portal, he could view scanned answer sheets and independently verify the personal details of one evaluator whose account he accessed.

“If this was a test portal, why was this information uploaded on it?” Adhikary asked.

The BBC has sent a list of questions to CBSE and CERT-IN – their response is awaited.