CBSE controversy: Meet the 3 musketeers who exposed systemic failures on social media

While traditional media outlets overlooked the cracks, three teenagers armed with internet connections and public records just exposed the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) on a national scale.

Utilising X (formerly Twitter) as their primary platform, Vedant Shrivastava, Nisarga Adhikary, and Sarthak Sidhant dismantled the board’s narrative on evaluation accuracy, digital security, and procurement integrity. 

The compounding crisis for the education board unfolded through three distinct, citizen-led investigations:

1. The Paper Swap

It began when 17-year-old Vedant Shrivastava questioned his exam marks and applied for the official CBSE re-evaluation process. When the paperwork arrived, Shrivastava discovered the board had sent him an entirely different student’s Physics answer sheet. After he posted the evidence on X, he faced a coordinated smear campaign, with IT cells labeling the teenager a “Pakistani” in an attempt to discredit his claims. Shrivastava persisted, forcing the board to confront the systemic errors in its evaluation pipeline.

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2. The Security Breach

As the board scrambled over evaluation discrepancies, 19-year-old Nisarga Adhikary shifted the focus to data security. Adhikary successfully breached the CBSE website, discovering a critical vulnerability that left student data exposed. He initially reported the flaw directly to CBSE officials, but after receiving no response or corrective action, he took the findings public on X. His detailed breakdown demonstrated exactly how vulnerable the board’s digital infrastructure was to malicious actors.

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3. The Tender Discrepancy

The final blow came from 18-year-old Sarthak Sidhant, who targeted the board’s financial and administrative operations. Sidhant audited a CBSE Online Screen Marking (OSM) tender and published a comprehensive thread on X. He detailed how the tender conditions allegedly favored a specific vendor, COEMPT. Sidhant bypassed social media anonymity entirely, taking his factual evidence directly to mainstream media cameras to explain the procurement anomalies on the record. 

As a social media user wrote, “These three boys are doing what whole media failed to do, all of them took x to expose CBSE.”