NEW DELHI: Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, on Sunday accused the Central government and the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) of compromising the evaluation process of answer sheets, alleging that changes in tender specifications resulted in answer sheets being scanned using mobile phones.
In a post on X, Rahul Gandhi referred to a CBSE tender issued in May 2025 and alleged that technical requirements related to the scanning of answer sheets were significantly diluted in a revised tender released later.
"CBSE's May 2025 tender required answer sheets to be scanned with automatic robotic scanners, spines preserved, at a minimum of 300 DPI. The tender reissued in August quietly removed all of it. 'Scanners' became generic. Resolution dropped to 200 DPI," Rahul Gandhi said.
He further alleged that answer sheets were scanned using mobile phones, raising concerns about the integrity of the evaluation process.
"Now we know what that meant in practice. It has been exposed that COEMPT scanned the answer sheets using mobile phones. The blurred copies, the missing pages, the unscanned books - they are not 'errors.' They are the predictable outcome of a contract written to fit a vendor," Rahul Gandhi alleged.
Describing the issue as "fraud," Rahul Gandhi said that students had suffered due to the alleged irregularities.
"This is fraud. And every child whose marks were wrongly evaluated is a victim of it," he said.
Targeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, Rahul Gandhi questioned the government's response to the controversy.
"This morning, the Prime Minister had time to speak about mangoes. He has not had time to speak about 18.5 lakh children whose answer sheets were scanned with phones. Dharmendra Pradhan still sits in office. Modi's silence is no longer indifference. It is complicity," Rahul Gandhi said.
The remarks come amid increasing scrutiny of CBSE following reports of technical failures in its post-result portal and allegations of discrepancies in the evaluation of answer sheets.
Earlier in the day, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge also criticised the Centre over the controversy surrounding alleged irregularities in the CBSE evaluation process.
In a post on X, Mallikarjun Kharge claimed that students who raised concerns were being labelled as "Deep State Agents" and "Pakistanis" instead of having their grievances addressed.
Mallikarjun Kharge further alleged that both CBSE students and NEET aspirants had become victims of what he described as the government's failures in the education sector, intensifying the political debate over the examination and evaluation system.