CBSE OSM row: How did a software vendor with an abysmal track record get to decide futures of 98 lakh students?

The row around the CBSE’s On-Screen Marking (OSM) system simply refuses to die down. The system, which was meant to modernise the evaluation of class 12 answer scripts, has collapsed into a crisis.

Correct answers marked wrong. Missing answer sheet pages. Nearly 70,000 papers rescanned. At the centre of the fiasco is a Hyderabad firm with a chequered background, which beat Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) to win the contract. 

The CBSE, for its part, has defended the new method for checking answer scripts, saying it was brought in to improve “transparency, fairness and consistency” in the evaluation process. The Ministry of Education also dismissed concerns around the marking process, saying the system is secure and follows global practices for transparent evaluation.

The defence, however, was not enough to cut it with the students, their parents or even teachers. Now, the main question is: How did a software vendor with a sketchy background get the tender to decide the future of 98 lakh students? 

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“CBSE did not just pick a bad software vendor by accident,” says student

Picking a bad (or rather, notorious) software vendor was not an accident as it turns out. After days of reading CBSE’s evaluation tenders, Sarthak found out that the company at the centre of it all was Coempt Edutek.

Sarthak, a Class 12 student from the 2025-26 batch, alleged that CBSE lowered financial baselines, compromised on software security certifications, and reduced the corrupt practices cooling-off period by half. 

Not only this, but Sarthak also claimed that the CBSE allegedly removed the physical server isolation requirement and erased the word ‘blacklisting’ from their penalty matrix through a last-minute corrigendum, which was issued right before bidding. 

Towards the end of his blog, Sarthak said that the episode had caused tremendous anxiety among students and their parents. 

“They gambled with our data security, our marks, and our mental health. The Institution failed us. I hope this gets covered more. and the institution answers my questions. and provides clarity.”

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An old offender

Coempt Edu Tek was previously known as Globarena Technologies. Globarena was behind the 2019 Telangana intermediate exam disaster, where 3.8 lakh students got wrong or misleading marks due to software issues, leading to 23 student suicides. 

A government committee tasked to probe the massive fiasco found systemic failure and negligence. Six months later, it was a classic old wine in a new bottle scenario as Globarena rebranded as Coempt Edutech. 

How Coempt outdid TCS? 

The first tender was issued in February 2025, which suddenly disappeared from the GeM portal. Three months later, four companies, including Coempt and TCS, applied for the second tender. All of them failed the technical evaluation, leading to the cancellation of the tender.

After two failed attempts, Coempt got the tender in the third attempt in August 2025. Coempt quoted around ₹24.75 per answer booklet, inclusive of taxes, whereas TCS quoted roughly ₹65-66 per booklet before taxes, making the former the lowest bidder.

Furthermore, it is being alleged that a series of rule changes happened between the second and third tenders, making it easier for Coempt to qualify. 

The revenue loophole that benefited Coempt

The most significant rule change that favoured Coempt over others was keeping the turnover threshold high enough to block small players, but exactly low enough for Coempt to make it. According to the old rules, bidders must have an average annual turnover of at least ₹50 crore over the last 3 financial years, i.e., from FY2022-23 to 2024-25, specifically from digital examination/evaluation services. 

While TCS is a juggernaut in its own right, Rankguru Technology Services was no less, as it had a clear three-year average of ₹117.56 crore. Coempt Edu Tek, on the other hand, qualified for the tender by a razor-thin margin of less than 1.7% as its three-year average only sits at ₹50.86 crore. 

Previously, a smaller company, Shree Info Solution, asked CBSE to lower the minimum eligible average annual turnover for the last 3 years to ₹30 crore to promote fair competition, but CBSE refused them.

Sarthak wrote, “They did not want small players, but apparently, Coempt, who qualified it by a very thin margin, qualifies for it. It indicates that CBSE’s eligibility parameters were not designed to seek out the most secure and mature software. Instead, the floor was held high enough to block smaller companies, while the ceiling was lowered precisely to fit the financial and technical limitations of Coempt.”

This is not it?

He mentioned that software engineering quality is measured on the CMMI (Capability Maturity Model Integration) scale from 1 to 5. According to the old rules, the required level is 5, but the new rules dropped it to 3. Incidentally, the CMMI level of Coempt Edu Tek is reported as 3. Moreover, the cooling-off period for engaging retired CBSE officials was allegedly cut from two years to one, making it easier to influence the process. 

According to the old rules, the bidders are required to have their own data centre and disaster recovery centre in India. The change in rules allowed third-party MeitY-empanelled cloud hosting and Coempt runs on Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Azure. This hurt TCS as it has its own data centres, implying that student data is no longer on sovereign Indian infrastructure. 

The old rules also required the bidders to own or control the complete source code of their software, whereas the new rules deleted this. Coempt’s platform allegedly runs on Microsoft’s proprietary IIS (Internet Information Service). “The CBSE allowed proprietary platforms. Coempt’s onmark was based on a proprietary platform. CBSE rewrote the rules for Coempt’s Accessibility.”

The penalty structure was also changed to punish delays instead of punishing mistakes. Under the old rules, vendors were fined for wrong scanning, merged pages and unscanned books. The assigned penalties were as follows: 

• Mismatch/wrong scanning: ₹4,000 per answer book
• Partial/merged scanning: ₹8,000 per answer book
• Un-scanned books: ₹15,000 per answer book

The new rules dropped this and instead levied ₹50,000 per day for delays, proving that the CBSE prioritised volume over accuracy and quality. “Instead of penalising the Vendor for mistakes, CBSE asked the Vendor to fix the mistake on time; they will only be penalised if the mistake can’t be fixed on time. This brought additional rush.”

The reform, which wasn’t even supposed to arrive this year

Educators told India Today that schools faced similar digital evaluation experiments during the COVID years, especially for internal assessments. 

A principal of a government school located in the Mumbai suburbs said, “We were trained for OSM marking for class 9 during COVID, but the system suggested multiple glitches and the idea was eventually dropped by the Board. It was not supposed to be implemented this year. We were surprised ourselves. It was a lesson many of us were not prepared for.” 

The principal of a private school in Bhubaneswar said, “We were not a part of the training exercise held by the Board. The OSM for Class 12 was not on the cards for 2026.” She added that they were given very little time to train the teachers.