A simple transparency-first approach—without fees, portals, or procedural hurdles—based on disclosure of answer scripts, student verification, and targeted re-evaluation could have enabled independent score verification and correction, while avoiding much of the controversy surrounding CBSE’s OSM rollout.
▪ The OSM controversy is fundamentally a transparency and process-design issue, not merely a technology problem.
▪ Once answer scripts were digitized, CBSE could have proactively disclosed them to all students.
▪ Students are being asked to pay to identify and correct deficiencies they did not create
▪ A simple, fee-free, portal-free framework based on disclosure, verification, and targeted re-evaluation.
▪ The central lesson is that transparency should precede dispute resolution.
It is now nearly four weeks since CBSE declared the Class XII results on May 13. Yet, the On-Screen Marking (OSM) rollout continues to be overshadowed by limited disclosure of answer scripts, recurring portal glitches, payment gateway failures, procedural complexities, and repeated extensions of timelines. Conceived as a major digital reform to enhance transparency, standardization, and accountability in the evaluation of descriptive answer scripts, OSM represented one of the most ambitious changes undertaken by CBSE in recent years.
However, the implementation appears to have proceeded without adequate preparation commensurate with the scale and complexity of the exercise, including structured training of technical and academic personnel, infrastructure validation, pilot testing, dry runs, and full load simulations involving nearly 1.7 million students, about 9.8 million answer scripts, and several tens of millions of questions subject to verification and re-evaluation.
Persistent Challenges
The difficulties have persisted despite sustained efforts by technical teams, including those from the IIT ecosystem, to address vulnerabilities, operational deficiencies, and cybersecurity concerns. Yet reports of fresh irregularities continue to emerge, while CBSE has reportedly
moved towards developing its own re-evaluation portal in place of the earlier vendor supported system.
The consequences are being borne by nearly 1.7 million Class XII students whose marks directly influence admissions, scholarships, eligibility criteria, merit rankings, and future academic opportunities. Reports have also emerged of students who qualified in highly competitive examinations such as JEE (Advanced) facing uncertainty about their eligibility due to unexpectedly low Class XII scores, adding to the anxiety surrounding the evaluation process.
The controversy is further amplified by the relatively small number of students who have managed to navigate the multi-stage process of obtaining answer scripts, verification, and re evaluation, despite widespread reports of anomalies. It raises broader questions about whether the existing Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) are advancing transparency or inadvertently restricting access to it.
Against this backdrop, the solution may be far simpler than the process that created the crisis. A fee-free, portal-free framework based on proactive disclosure of digitized answer scripts, verification of script integrity, and targeted re-evaluation of genuine discrepancies could still restore confidence, reduce disputes, and align descriptive evaluation with the transparency principles that have transformed MCQ-based examinations across India over the past decade.
Process, Transparency, and Governance
The evidence suggests that the primary challenge is not technological. The answer scripts have already been digitized, secure communication platforms are widely available, and India routinely operates digital systems serving hundreds of millions of users. The real issue appears to lie in process design, transparency, and governance. A transparency-first framework would have proactively disclosed digitized answer scripts, enabled verification of their integrity, corrected deficiencies, and limited re-evaluation to genuine anomalies. Instead, transparency became dependent on applications, fees, portals, and procedural hurdles. The OSM controversy, therefore, raises a larger question: whether digital evaluation should be driven solely by technology or by governance frameworks that place student interests, transparency, and accountability at the center of the process.
Access Answer Scripts before Dispute
Once answer scripts had been digitized as part of the OSM workflow, CBSE could have proactively shared them with all students through secure digital channels. It would have enabled students and parents to verify whether the scripts were complete, readable, correctly indexed, and genuinely the work of the concerned student, including all supplementary sheets, graphs, maps, diagrams, and attachments. Deficiencies such as missing pages, blurred scans, incorrect uploads, or indexing errors could then have been identified and corrected before the verification and re-evaluation stages commenced.
Instead, access to answer scripts became dependent on applications, fee payments, portal availability, and compressed timelines. As a result, transparency was transformed from an integral part of the evaluation process into a demand-based service, limiting meaningful verification to only a small fraction of the affected student population.
Payment for Systematic Errors
Missing pages, blurred scans, indexing errors, omitted supplementary sheets, incorrect uploads, and possible evaluation anomalies originate within the examination, digitization, and evaluation processes, not with students. Yet, under the current framework, students are required to pay fees and navigate multiple procedural stages merely to access their own records, verify their completeness and authenticity, identify deficiencies, and seek correction or re-evaluation where necessary.
In effect, students and parents are being asked to invest time, effort, and money to detect and rectify problems for which they bear no responsibility. This is particularly significant because Class XII results directly influence admissions, scholarships, eligibility, merit rankings, and future academic opportunities.
A basic principle of good governance is that the responsibility for identifying and correcting administrative, procedural, or technological deficiencies should rest with the institution responsible for the process. Once answer scripts have been digitized, access, verification, and corrective action should form part of the quality-assurance mechanism rather than a fee-based service. The fundamental question, therefore, is one of fairness: should students pay to identify and correct systemic deficiencies, or should transparency and verification be built into the evaluation framework as a matter of right?
Resolving the OSM crisis
The answer scripts are already digitized, the communication infrastructure is in place, and the verification process can be completed within days. CBSE can still proactively disclose digitized answer scripts to all students, provide a short verification window to confirm their completeness and authenticity, correct genuine digitization deficiencies, and thereafter permit targeted re-evaluation of identified anomalies.
Such an approach would reduce dependence on portals, applications, and payment gateways, and eliminate procedural complexities while extending transparency and corrective mechanisms to all affected students rather than a limited subset able to navigate the existing system. More importantly, it would transform students and parents from adversaries in dispute resolution into partners in quality assurance, helping restore confidence in both the OSM process and the evaluation system’s credibility.
The foremost reform is to make transparency the default rather than the exception. Every digitized answer script should be proactively disclosed to students immediately after evaluation, without requiring applications, fees, or procedural hurdles. Students should then be given a brief verification window to confirm the completeness, readability, and authenticity of their records before any review process begins.
Future systems should also incorporate robust pre-deployment testing, stakeholder consultation, evaluator training, independent audits, and clearly defined Standard Operating Procedures. Most importantly, verification should precede dispute resolution, and re evaluation should be confined to genuine anomalies identified through a transparent review process. Public trust in digital evaluation will depend not merely on technology, but on governance frameworks that place transparency, accountability, and student interests at the center of the system.
Way forward
The OSM controversy is ultimately not a test of technology but of transparency. The answer scripts are already digitized, the communication infrastructure already exists, and the path to restoring confidence is straightforward. The central lesson is that transparency should precede dispute resolution: students should first be able to access and verify their evaluated answer scripts before being asked to seek correction or re-evaluation.
Even now, CBSE can restore confidence through a fee-free, portal-free framework based on proactive disclosure of digitized answer scripts, verification of their completeness and authenticity, and targeted re-evaluation of genuine anomalies. For nearly 1.7 million students whose admissions and future opportunities depend on these results, the issue is one of fairness and academic justice. The real question is whether transparency will be treated as a right of every student rather than a service available only through applications, fees, and procedural hurdles.
Disclaimer
Views expressed above are the author’s own.
