Coempt defends OSM system: ‘95% of students received scanned copies’

The company defended the scanning process for answer sheets, denied allegations of data-security lapses and substandard hardware.

The company that built the Central Board of School Education’s (CBSE’s) on-screen marking (OSM) system, Hyderabad-based Coempt Edu Teck , on Thursday defended its execution of the project that is facing widespread public criticism and scrutiny.

In its first statement over the controversy, the company also denied allegations that tender conditions were changed to favour it. (RAJ K RAJ /HT PHOTO)

The company defended the scanning process for answer sheets, denied allegations of data-security lapses and substandard hardware, attributed answer-sheet mix-ups to manual errors rather than software glitches, and cited court rulings in a 2019 Telangana case to assert that it had been cleared of allegations of past wrongdoing.

In its first statement over the controversy, the company also denied allegations that tender conditions were changed to favour it.

In a parallel outreach effort, Coempt sent separate letters dated June 12, titled “A Note of Assurance on Continuity, Compliance and Service Quality,” to its more than 35 clients, including universities and school boards, seeking to reassure them that the recent OSM controversy would not affect its ability to deliver “secure, accurate and uninterrupted” examination services.

Coempt’s clarification has come after multiple glitches surfaced during the hurried implementation of CBSE’s OSM system for checking of answer scripts and the post-result process.

Responding to allegations that some students were shown answer sheets belonging to other candidates, Coempt said it had traced one such incident to the physical scanning stage rather than a software failure. “We have identified the location and the individual who conducted the scanning. We have verified 100% that, technologically, there is no error in this case,” the company said, adding that preliminary findings pointed to “manual oversight”.

Earlier, a senior education ministry official had on May 29 said that around 20 cases had come to light in which scanned pages belonging to different candidates had been mixed up. The issue drew attention after Class 12 students, including Vedant Shrivastava found mismatched content in answer sheets made available during re-evaluation. CBSE later contacted the student and provided them with the correct scripts.

The company said complaints regarding blurred images and handwriting visibility were being reviewed with evaluation authorities. It also said that despite “isolated bottlenecks”, nearly 95% of students who applied for access to scanned copies had received them. According to CBSE data, 404,319 students had sought scanned copies of their answer sheets. Going by Coempt’s claim, around 384,103 applicants have received access, leaving roughly 20,216 students still awaiting their copies.

Neither CBSE nor Coempt responded to HT’s queries on the reasons for the delay in providing access to the remaining applicants or when the pending requests would be cleared.

The board used Coempt’s OnMark platform to digitally evaluate nearly 10 million Class 12 answer scripts before declaring results on May 13. Out of roughly 9.8 million answer sheets scanned, more than 68,000 suffered image-quality issues and over 13,000 had to be evaluated manually because they were digitally illegible.

HT reported on June 6 that CBSE had discontinued the use of Coempt’s OnMark platform for the re-evaluation process amid concerns over the security of examination and student data and shifted operations to infrastructure under the board’s direct control. HT also reported that Coempt had submitted cybersecurity certificates that had expired and were linked to another client.

The re-evaluation exercise is now being conducted through a new OSM portal developed with assistance from experts from IIT Madras and IIT Kanpur. An IIT official had earlier told HT that the platform runs on the same codebase used by Coempt but is hosted entirely on CBSE-controlled servers.

In its latest response, Coempt rejected allegations that tender conditions had been altered to accommodate inferior hardware, saying the scanners used by the company were industry-standard models upgraded regularly. It also addressed claims by a 19-year-old ethical hacker who said he had accessed parts of the platform, maintaining that the intrusion involved only a publicly accessible “testing server used for internal purposes” and that no student data or operational systems had been compromised.

The company also revisited the 2019 Telangana Intermediate examination controversy, saying courts had examined the matter fully and upheld findings clearing it of wrongdoing. Referring to the case, it said the Supreme Court had noted that only 1,183 of 380,000 lakh failed candidates were found to have passed upon review and rejected pleas seeking mass re-evaluation and criminal action against the technology provider.

In the June 12 letter signed by chief executive VSN Raju, Coempt told clients that it had “nothing to conceal” about its history and asserted that neither the company nor any of its earlier entities had ever been blacklisted by any board, university or government authority. It invited institutions to examine court orders and official documents.

The controversy has also brought renewed attention to the CBSE’s OSM procurement process. As reported by HT on May 29, CBSE’s first tender attracted no bids and none of the four bidders in the second round qualified technically. Several conditions were subsequently relaxed in the third tender, including the requirement for automated robotic scanning and the minimum scanning resolution, which was reduced from 300 DPI to 200 DPI. Coempt eventually secured the contract after edging past Tata Consultancy Services by two marks in technical evaluation and submitting a financial bid nearly 60% lower than that of the Mumbai-headquartered company.

“The company firmly denied allegations that tender conditions were altered to accommodate substandard hardware,” Coempt said.

In a public statement and a June 12 letter to clients, including the Council of Higher Secondary Education, Odisha, the company said recent allegations regarding answer-sheet accessibility, image quality and cybersecurity were based on “incomplete or inaccurate information” and did not reflect the quality of its operations.

It said it remained fully compliant with regulatory requirements and currently served more than 35 universities and institutions, processing nearly two crore answer booklets annually through digitisation, on-screen marking, AI-assisted evaluation and question-paper management.