“… 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,” Rahul said.
NEW DELHI — Senior Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has intensified his attack on the Centre over the CBSE On-Screen Marking (OSM) controversy, alleging that changes to the board’s tender process enabled serious irregularities in the scanning and evaluation of answer sheets.
Citing details of the tender process, Rahul Gandhi said the original May 2025 tender mandated the use of automatic robotic scanners, preservation of answer sheet spines, and a minimum scanning resolution of 300 DPI. However, he alleged that a revised tender issued in August diluted these safeguards, replacing them with broader specifications and reducing the minimum resolution to 200 DPI.
Referring to reports that answer sheets were allegedly scanned using mobile phones, Rahul said the resulting discrepancies were not accidental.
“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,” he said.
The Congress leader further claimed that the alleged lapses had adversely affected students, accusing the government of failing to take responsibility.
“This is fraud. And every child whose marks were wrongly evaluated is a victim of it,” he said.
In a sharp remark, Rahul Gandhi also questioned Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s silence on the issue.
“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,” he said.
He also targeted Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, stating that accountability remained absent despite the growing controversy.
The allegations have intensified the political row over CBSE’s evaluation process, raising broader concerns about transparency, accountability, and the handling of student-related issues.
