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'Tender Investigator': Rahul meets Gen-Z blogger Sarthak as govt finally acts on CBSE amid paper-checking scandal
Sarthak Sidhant is the second teenaged whistleblower — of the three overall — whom Gandhi has publicly backed in three days.
Leader of the Opposition and Congress MP Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday evening met Sarthak Sidhant, the 17-year-old whose blog exposed alleged irregularities in the procurement of the CBSE's On-Screen Marking (OSM) system. He is the second teenaged whistleblower — of the three overall — whom Gandhi has publicly backed in three days.
The meeting came hours after Sidhant deposed before the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Education, sharing his probe; hours after which the Narendra Modi government changed the CBSE chairman and ordered an inquiry into the OSM procurement.
Sidhant says he caught "at least 15 discrepancies" in successive CBSE tenders, and that rules were rewritten to favour the firm running OSM, Coempt EduTeck; the CBSE and the firm have denied the allegations. The CBSE has acknoledged errors in the OSM and sought to correct them over the past week since the issue blew up.
“Sarthak, apne sidhanton pe adig raho,” Rahul said in Hindi on X, using the student's name in wordplay to say, “Sarthak, stay firm on your principles ('sidhant').”
Also read | Gen-Z blogger meets Parl panel with his CBSE investigation, then comes action on officers
He also used the coinage ‘#TenderInvestigator’ in another a play on the teenager's trawl through tender documents on the Central Public Procurement portal.
The gesture follows Gandhi's May 31 meeting with Vedant Shrivastava, the Class 12 student who found that the Physics answer sheet CBSE uploaded under his roll number was not his. His X post had crossed 2.5 million views and forced the board to admit a scanning mix-up.
In a video of that interaction, Gandhi turned the online abuse the students had faced into mockery of their critics. "A revealing chat with my fellow 'anti-national Soros agents'," Gandhi wrote.
"Vedant and his friends are brilliant, brave young Indians who asked CBSE and the Modi government simple questions but got insults instead of answers. They deserve a bright and secure future. We will make sure they get it."
In the clip, Vedant told Gandhi he had been branded a "Pakistani agent" for flagging the wrong answer sheet. Gandhi asked the students, "Were you also called 'terrorists'? Tell me!" He then laughed: "Seventeen-year-old 'deep state agents'! Show their faces… Come on, show the faces of these 'terrorists'!"
Vedant's elder brother Siddhant said critics had tried to portray them as "deep state agents" seeking to create unrest rather than engage with their complaints.
Sidhant, Vedant and a third teenager — 19-year-old Nisarga Adhikary, an ethical hacker who flagged vulnerabilities in the OSM portal — have become the public faces of a wider revolt against this year's run of examination failures, which also includes the cancelled NEET-UG 2026 medical entrance test, now headed for a June 21 re-test after a paper leak. (Nisarga does not exactly show his face, using Anime images instead as his identity.)
Their findings have been picked up also by the Cockroach Janta Party, an online movement that came last month. It is demanding the resignation of education minister Dharmendra Pradhan, and plans a protest at Jantar Mantar on June 6. That ‘party’ is itself a wordplay on the Chief Justice of India Surya Kant's comments referencing insects and parasites last month.
Rahul Gandhi has separately demanded Pradhan's removal and a judicial inquiry into the OSM row. Pradhan has said he takes "full responsibility" for the disruptions and promised no further lapses.
