'CBSE Rewrote Rules To Favour COEMPT', Sarthak Siddhant Says In Chat With Rahul Gandhi

As the future of millions of students hang in the balance after India's Central Board of Secondary Education deployed a new evaluation method - On-Screen Markin - students are themselves stepping up to investigate the flaws in the system.

At the forefront is Sarthak Sidhant, a Grade 12 whistleblower, who appeared before the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Education in Delhi to tell them how the CBSE tenders had been rigged to favour a certain company - COEMPT Eduteck.

Sarthak said he has done "what a concerned citizen should do. Every person should have the civic sense to read through things and try to make the system transparent, even if it is not."

Stay up to date with the latest news. Follow KT on WhatsApp Channels. How did he expose their flaws?

The student detailed his process in a chat with Indian opposition leader Rahul Gandhi.

When a fellow student, Nisarg Adhikari, an ethical hacker sent Sarthak vulnerabilities related to the CBSE portal, Sarthak noticed that all of them were from OnMark, which is COEMPT Edutek's online solution for OSM evaluation.

With COEMPT having a reputation for vulnerabilities with multiple universities using OnMark, Sarthak said it gave him "a sense of curiosity on why CBSE, on which the future of 17 lakh students are decided, are using such an insecure platform?

He then studied the tenders that CBSE issued, taking a deep dive into these documents, confirming that the tender was changed thrice, and "the rules were rewritten multiple times" before the contract was awarded to COEMPT.

Sarthak called this "suspicious" behaviour, and added that even after the changing of tenders, proper security audits were not conducted.

When Rahul Gandhi questioned why decision makers did not find these issues with the OSM method if an 18-year-old was able to spot the loopholes, Sarthak said this means one of multiple things.

Those in charge "either were not serious about their jobs, or they liked COEMPT, or they are not serious about students' future," he added.

Sarthak pointed out that the initial 'request of proposal' document contained a clause that stated that the service provider will be disqualified if there is a record of poor performance.

COEMPT has a record of poor performance; in 2019, in the Telangana State Board Exams, 23 students killed themselves after a technical glitch led to faulty marks and mishandling of results, Sarthak pointed out.

The first tender was issued in February, later cancelled, the second issued in May, also cancelled, and the third was issued in August, Sarthak said.

When COEMPT won the tender, which Indian media says took place in December, it was just 74 days before CBSE implemented OSM marking, Sarthak said.

"There was not enough time for preparation. Teachers have said they were not given enough tutorials, there were crashes and system issues."

Moreover, in August, the request of proposal was issued, and just one month later, in September, a corrigendum was issued, which is an official document issued by the tendering authority to correct or amend a previously published tender notice.

This corrigendum took away the power of CBSE to blacklist COEMPT if a data breach occurred, Sarthak told Rahul, to which the Indian opposition leader replied: "Why would CBSE take away power from themselves?"

The conclusion he derived from all the discrepancies he found was that "CBSE was rewriting the rules to favour COEMPT", the young whistleblower said.

Why would CBSE give the contract to a company that "already destroyed 3.5 lakh students in Telangana?" The same system was implemented nationwide, with the same results [of anguish among students], he added.

Sarthak sees a future for himself in civic tech, analysing government policies and citizen issues from a digital aspect.

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