Congress raises alarm over alleged CBSE answer sheet leak, questions evaluation contractor

Congress leader Jairam Ramesh on Sunday alleged that the answer sheets of nearly two million CBSE Class 12 students had been exposed in the public domain, describing the incident as a massive breach of privacy and demanding answers from the authorities over the handling of students’ data.

In a statement posted on social media platform X, Ramesh claimed that the alleged leak represented a serious lapse in data security and accused the government of failing to safeguard sensitive student information.

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“In today’s developments on Mantri Pradhan’s Ministry of Scandals, the answer sheets of 2 million CBSE Grade 12 students have been shown to be available in the public domain,” he said.

The Congress leader said the alleged exposure of answer scripts compromised the privacy of millions of students and renewed criticism of COEMPT, the company responsible for the digitisation and evaluation process. He alleged that the company had benefited from changes made to the technical requirements outlined in the Request for Proposal (RFP) issued by the CBSE.

“This is a data breach of monumental proportions and it compromises the privacy of 2 million students. The incompetence and callousness of COEMPT is once again exposed,” Ramesh said.

Raising concerns about the quality of the digitised answer sheets that reportedly surfaced online, Ramesh pointed to visible folds and drop shadows in the documents, arguing that such characteristics are typically associated with images captured using mobile phones rather than high-quality scanning systems.

“The answer sheets that have emerged also bear folds and drop shadows — which are associated with scans made via mobile phones rather than scanning machines,” he said.

Ramesh further referred to what he described as changes in the tender conditions, claiming that the requirement for a robotic scanner had been removed in a later version of the RFP. He questioned the type of equipment ultimately used by the contractor and sought an explanation for the apparent quality issues in the scanned documents.

“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? Why are the scans of such poor quality?” he asked.

The allegations add to the ongoing political debate over examination management, public procurement processes and data protection standards in educational institutions.