Amid row On-Screen Marking (OSM) system, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) on Thursday asserted that it is a "secure and robust IT platform" and that no compromise or vulnerability has been reported in the actual evaluation portal.
The Board said the platform has been "tested and certified through empanelled security audits" and is backed by a "robust digital infrastructure" with multiple safeguards and quality checks to ensure secure scanning and processing of answer books.
In a post on X, the CBSE said answer books are "safe" and have undergone "multiple quality-control mechanisms".
The post comes amid a controversy over the contract awarded for the digital evaluation of Class 12 board exam answer sheets for 2026, along with social media claims alleging flaws in the OSM system.
A day earlier, the CBSE had rejected allegations related to the award of the contract to Coempt Edutech, calling the claims erroneous, misleading and unfounded.
The Board said the contract was awarded after following due procedure under the General Financial Rules.
The issue escalated after Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday demanded an independent judicial probe and a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to investigate the "entire scam".
He alleged that a firm with a controversial history in Telangana had been awarded the contract by the CBSE.
Gandhi said CBSE students and parents are traumatised while Prime Minister Narendra Modi "has nothing to say."
In a video shared on social media, Gandhi said, "COEMPT, the company that did the On-Screen Marking (OSM) for your exam, was actually called Globarena.
Globarena has carried out this scam twice before in Telangana, once in the board exam in Telangana in 2019 and after that again in Telangana in 2023.
The same OSM-based errors were responsible for the death by suicide of 23 young Indians in Telangana," the leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha said.
Meanwhile, several Class 12 students have alleged discrepancies in marks and mismatches between scanned copies of answer sheets uploaded by the Board and their handwriting, raising concerns over the OSM process.