Ranit Kr. Singh , New Delhi – Scanned copies of CBSE answer scripts will be available to students via DigiLocker starting next year, officials announced Friday. The board robustly defended its full-scale rollout of the On-Screen Marking (OSM) system and its decision to award the evaluation contract to Telangana-based Coempt Edu Teck. The implementation has faced intense scrutiny from opposition leaders, including Congress MP Rahul Gandhi, over Coempt’s past performance and the rapid 66-day timeline between the December 5, 2025 contract award and the February 9 rollout.

Officials clarified that Coempt was selected through a rigorous Quality and Cost Based Selection (QCBS) framework after two failed rounds of tendering. Coempt, holding a top-tier CMMI Level 5 certification, emerged as the lowest bidder at approximately ₹25.75 per answer script. In contrast, the only other technically qualified bidder, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), submitted a significantly higher bid of around ₹65 per copy. Addressing legal concerns regarding Coempt’s previous post-examination work in Telangana, officials noted that courts had examined the matters and found "nothing unusual."

The board also addressed recent technical glitches, acknowledging around 20 reported cases of answer-sheet mismatches out of 9.8 million answer books. While expressing regret for the affected students, officials argued that such human errors also occur in manual evaluation. They confirmed that an investigation is underway to make the system glitch-free. Furthermore, strict contractual penalties will be invoked against the vendor once verification is complete, including fines of ₹4,000 for wrongly scanned books, ₹8,000 for partially scanned copies, and ₹15,000 for completely unscanned answer sheets.