Class 12 student Sarthak Sidhant, who has been affected by the Central Board of Secondary Education’s (CBSE) On-Screen Marking (OSM) system, appeared before the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Education,
Women, Children, Youth and Sports on Tuesday to present his findings on the system’s implementation and alleged irregularities in the OSM tendering process, reported ANI.
Sidhant is giving a presentation to the committee at the Parliament House Annexe, where members are examining the use of OSM in CBSE Class 12 examinations and addressing students’ concerns about evaluation and transparency, sources told the news agency.
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Before the meeting, Sidhant claimed that a comparison of multiple CBSE tender documents showed several discrepancies which, in his view, seemed to benefit a particular service provider.
“There were many discrepancies. I have just compared them. There were at least 15 discrepancies as per my blog. I would like to highlight three or four of them,” he said.
Sidhant highlighted changes in the tender conditions related to the OSM system. He alleged that clauses concerning poor performance, blacklisting, financial qualification limits, CMMI levels and project eligibility criteria were modified across successive tenders.
“The first discrepancy is that in the old tender, there were three clauses of poor performance, that the service provider would be disqualified if they have poor performance. But in the new RFP, it was totally wiped out,” he alleged.
He said his research was conducted in collaboration with ethical hacker Nisarg Adhikari and journalists investigating the matter. He expressed hope that the issue would result in greater transparency in public procurement and educational evaluation systems.
Sidhant also clarified that he is not against the OSM system itself, but believes it needs more thorough testing before being rolled out. “I think OSM is a good change, but there should be wide rollouts first and good demo pilots,” he said.
The parliamentary panel is also examining the implementation of the three-language formula in Classes 9 and 10.
