Leader of the Opposition (LoP) in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi on Sunday (May 31, 2026) sharpened his attack on the Centre and the CBSE over the On-Screen Marking (OSM) controversy, alleging that changes in tender conditions had enabled irregularities in the scanning of answer sheets and describing the episode as a “fraud”.
Mr. Gandhi also posted a video of his interaction with a group of students affected by the controversy, describing it as a “revealing chat with my fellow ‘anti-national Soros agents’.”
In a post on X, Mr. Gandhi said the CBSE’s May 2025 tender required answer sheets to be scanned with automatic robotic scanners, spines preserved, at a minimum of 300 DPI. The tender re-issued in August removed all of it and scanners became generic and resolution dropped to 200 DPI, so that COEMPT can be chosen as the vendor, he alleged.
“The blurred copies, the missing pages, the unscanned books — they are not “errors.” They are the predictable outcome of a contract written to fit a vendor. This is fraud. And every child whose marks were wrongly evaluated is a victim of it,” Mr. Gandhi said.
“This morning, the Prime Minister had time to speak about mangoes. He has not had time to speak about 18.5 lakh children whose answer sheets were scanned with phones. Dharmendra Pradhan ji still sits in office. Modi ji’s silence is no longer indifference. It is complicity,” the Opposition leader added.
Sharing a video of his interaction with affected students, Mr. Gandhi said the students deserve a brighter future and the Congress would ensure it.
“Vedant and his friends are brilliant, brave young Indians who asked the CBSE and the Modi government simple questions — but got insults instead of answers. They deserve a bright and secure future. We will make sure they get it,” he said.
The controversy surfaced after Vedant, a Class 12 student, alleged in a post on X that the Physics answer sheet uploaded by the CBSE during the revaluation process was not his. The claim went viral, prompting several other students to report similar mismatches.
In the video, Mr. Gandhi is seen speaking informally with Vedant and other students and referring to allegations that they were branded “Pakistanis” and “deep state agents” for raising concerns.
“You are students. You are asking for your answer sheets, that’s all. Now, suddenly, you have become anti-nationals. You have to accept the problem if you have to solve the problem. You are refusing to accept the problem and blaming the 17-year-old kids and saying ‘you are deep state, you are spies, terrorists’,” Mr. Gandhi says in the clip.
“Were you also called terrorists? Tell me!” he asked Vedant, his brother and other students.
“Bhaiyya, show the faces of these ‘terrorists’,” Mr. Gandhi was heard telling the cameraperson in jest.
The Opposition leader’s comment was a dig at the BJP, which has often labelled him as “anti-national” and an agent of billionaire George Soros, who allegedly wants a regime change in India.
COEMPT, the company that handled OSM for the CBSE examinations, has come under sustained attack from Mr. Gandhi, who alleged that the firm, formerly known as Globarena, had a controversial past in Telangana.
The Congress leader has demanded an independent judicial probe and a SIT inquiry into what he called the “entire scam”, questioning why the firm was awarded the contract.
In a separate social media post, Congress communication chief Jairam Ramesh alleged a major data breach in the CBSE’s Class 12 examination system, claiming that answer sheets of nearly two million students were available in the public domain.
“In today’s developments on Mantri Pradhan’s Ministry of Scandals, the answer sheets of two million CBSE Grade 12 students have been shown to be available in the public domain,” Mr. Ramesh said in a post on X.
“This is a data breach of monumental proportions and it compromises the privacy of two million students,” he said, alleging that “the incompetence and callousness of COEMPT is once again exposed”.
Mr. Ramesh also questioned the quality of the scanned answer sheets, saying they bore “folds and drop shadows” usually associated with mobile-phone scans. “We know that the third RFP dropped the specification for a robotic scanner. The question then is what kind of scanners did COEMPT eventually use?” he asked.
The Congress has been demanding Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation and a CBI probe into the matter.
Published – May 31, 2026 06:37 pm IST
