Sarthak Sidhant has clarified that, contrary to certain media reports, he has not been hired by IIT Kanpur. Sidhant, a Class 12 student from Ranchi, Jharkhand, had gained fame for raising concerns about the CBSE On-Screen Marking (OSM) tendering process.
In a post shared on X, the 18-year-old clarified that IIT Kanpur has not hired him. The confusion stemmed from the fact that IIT Kanpur has hired another CBSE Class 12 graduate.
Nisarga Adhikary, who shared a blog post detailing vulnerabilities in the Central Board of Secondary Education’s on-screen portal, has been appointed Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) and threat intelligence engineer at IIT Kanpur’s technology innovation hub C3iHub.
Sarthak Sidhant’s clarified
Sarthak, 18, posted a clarification on X about incorrect reports linking him with a job at IIT Kanpur.
He responded to a post from Pankaj Jha, political editor at The Lallantop, who had written: “Sarthak Siddhant had exposed the irregularities in CBSE's OSM on-screen marking. Age just 17 years. He had laid bare the claims of CBSE. Now, IIT Kanpur's Director Manindra Agrawal has offered him a job at his institution.”
“This is not true,” said the CBSE Class 12 graduate.
{{/usCountry}}“This is not true,” said the CBSE Class 12 graduate.
{{/usCountry}}Pankaj Jha then cited a report from Dainik Jagran, despite getting a clarification straight from the horse’s mouth. Sarthak once again denied that he had been offered a job by IIT Kanpur.
“Arre bhai mujhe nhi mili hai naukri (I don’t have a job),” he insisted.
The director of IIT Kanpur, Professor Maninder Agrawal, also confirmed to HT that Sarthak had not been hired by the institute.
"Wrong report. I Never mentioned anything about Sarthak. I think reporter is confusing him with Nisarga. I never spoke to reporter either," IIT Kanpur director Prof Maninder Agrawal to HT on this report.
IIT Kanpur hires Nisarga Adhikary
Nisarga Adhikary was hired by IIT Kanpur on the basis of his blog post detailing vulnerabilities in the CBSE on-screen portal.
IIT Kanpur director Manindra Agrawal said he reached out to Adhikary after reading that post, published on May 22.
“Nisarga Adhikary has been appointed as an engineer in our cybersecurity team. A few years ago, we had similarly recruited a couple of young engineers for the same team. I am not sure whether he is the youngest recruit at IIT Kanpur, but he is certainly among the youngest engineers to have been hired by the institute,” Agrawal said.
(Also read: IIT Kanpur hires Nisarga Adhikary, teen who flagged flaws with CBSE's OSM system)
At IIT Kanpur, Adhikary, who cleared his Class 12 exams this year, will analyse actionable information from publicly available sources and identify vulnerabilities in websites and applications, helping organisations address and patch potential security flaws, officials said on Wednesday. He has been appointed on a contractual basis as an engineer under the institute’s cybersecurity team.