CBSE OSM Row: Class 12 student Sarthak Sidhant appears before parliamentary panel
Sarthak Sidhant, a Class 12 student affected by CBSE's OSM system, appeared before the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Tuesday to present his findings regarding the implementation of the system and alleged irregularities in the OSM tendering process.
Sarthak Sidhant, a Class 12 student affected by the Central Board of Secondary Education's (CBSE) On-Screen Marking (OSM) system, appeared before the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Education, Women, Children, Youth and Sports on Tuesday to present his findings regarding the implementation of the system and alleged irregularities in the OSM tendering process.
According to sources, quoted by news agencies, Sidhant is gave a presentation before the committee at the Parliament House Annexe, where members reviewed the use of OSM in CBSE Class 12 examinations and concerns raised by students regarding evaluation and transparency.
Ahead of the meeting, Sidhant alleged that a comparison of multiple CBSE tender documents revealed several discrepancies that, according to him, appeared to favour a particular service provider.
Speaking to ANI, he said, "There were many discrepancies. I have just compared them. There were at least 15 discrepancies as per my blog. I would like to highlight three or four of them."
Sidhant pointed to changes in the tender conditions governing the OSM system. He claimed that clauses relating to poor performance, blacklisting, financial qualification limits, CMMI levels and project eligibility criteria were altered across successive tenders.
"The first discrepancy is that in the old tender, there were three clauses of poor performance, that the service provider would be disqualified if they have poor performance. But in the new RFP, it was totally wiped out," he alleged.
The student said his research was undertaken in collaboration with ethical hacker Nisarg Adhikari and journalists investigating the issue. He expressed hope that the matter would lead to greater transparency in public procurement and educational evaluation systems.
Sidhant also clarified that he was not opposed to the OSM system itself but believed it required more extensive testing before implementation. "I think OSM is a good change, but there should be wide rollouts first and good demo pilots," he said.
The parliamentary panel is also reviewing the implementation of the three-language formula in Classes 9 and 10.
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