Did changes to OSM tender norms help Coempt secure CBSE contract?
CBSE revised key On-Screen Marking (OSM) tender norms in August 2025 after two failed bidding rounds for Class 12 board exam evaluation. While the changes enabled vendor selection, rescanning data, manual checks and earlier pilot warnings have raised questions about the preparedness of the nationwide rollout.
Just months before rolling out one of the most significant overhauls of the Class 12 evaluation process, CBSE was still unable to find a company to run its ambitious On-Screen Marking (OSM) system.
The board's first tender attracted no bids, while the second failed to produce a technically eligible bidder. It was only after CBSE revised several key requirements in a third tender issued in August 2025, including scanning standards, infrastructure specifications and bidder eligibility criteria, that the process yielded a winner.
The changes ultimately cleared the way for the selection of a vendor barely six months before the OSM system was deployed nationwide for millions of answer scripts, according to documents reviewed by Hindustan Times and officials familiar with the matter.
CBSE officials maintain that the revisions were aimed at correcting shortcomings in the earlier Request for Proposal (RFP) documents and improving the practicality of the tender process, rather than hastening implementation.
WHY DID CBSE HAVE TO FLOAT THREE TENDERS?
CBSE had planned to introduce the OSM system for the 2026 board examinations. However, the first tender failed to attract any bids and was eventually scrapped in accordance with the Government of India's General Financial Rules. The second tender also failed after no bidder met the technical eligibility requirements.
Officials involved in the process later identified operational and procedural issues in the initial RFP documents. These shortcomings were addressed in the third tender, issued in August 2025, which modified several conditions and eventually resulted in successful participation from vendors.
TCS AND COEMPT QUALIFIED IN FINAL ROUND
Minutes of an internal committee meeting dated November 19, 2025, show that Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Coempt Edu Teck cleared the technical evaluation stage in the third tender. Following financial evaluation under the Quality-and-Cost Based Selection framework, Coempt emerged as the successful bidder after submitting the lowest financial bid.
Despite securing the contract, no payment has yet been released to the company. Officials stated that any decision on penalties or contractual action would be taken only after the completion of the re-evaluation process and supplementary examinations.
HOW WERE TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS RELAXED?
Several key requirements were revised between the failed tenders and the August 2025 RFP.
Among the most significant changes was the reduction in the minimum scanning resolution from 300 DPI to 200 DPI, provided the scanned copies remained clearly readable. During pre-bid consultations in May, TCS had argued that even 150 DPI would be sufficient while reducing file sizes and retrieval time.
CBSE also relaxed infrastructure requirements. While the February and May tenders mandated automated or robotic high-speed scanners and scanning without cutting the answer book spine, the August tender dropped the explicit robotic scanner requirement and simply required vendors to provide scanners as part of the IT infrastructure.
WIDENING THE POOL OF ELIGIBLE BIDDERS
The August tender also relaxed software process maturity requirements.
The earlier tenders required bidders to possess Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) Level 5 certification, the highest level of process maturity. The final tender reduced the requirement to Level 3, significantly expanding the number of companies eligible to participate.
CBSE officials rejected suggestions that the changes were designed to favour any specific bidder. They maintained that the selected company met all applicable government norms, was not blacklisted by any agency, and was chosen through a competitive and compliant procurement process.
SPEED VS QUALITY
While technical specifications were eased in some areas, the August tender imposed tougher penalties for operational delays.
The February tender had focused heavily on scanning accuracy, prescribing penalties of Rs 20,000 for wrongly or partially scanned answer books and Rs 50,000 for unscanned scripts. Delays attracted penalties of 6% per day, capped at 30%.
The May tender reduced these penalties considerably, lowering fines for mismatched, partial, and unscanned copies and reducing delay penalties to 1% per day, capped at 10%.
The August tender shifted the emphasis away from individual scanning errors and toward meeting operational deadlines. Vendors could face penalties of Rs 50,000 per working day if answer books from the previous day were not scanned on time, while delays in system rollout attracted penalties of Rs 10 lakh per week.
COULD THE SYSTEM HANDLE THE SCALE?
The volume of answer books processed under OSM highlights the challenge of balancing speed with accuracy.
If approximately 550,000 Physics answer books were scanned within a single day, the system would have needed to process nearly 380 copies every minute around the clock. For English examinations, involving close to 1.7 million answer books, the processing rate would have approached 1,200 copies per minute.
Although scanning operations were distributed across multiple centres nationwide, the scale remained enormous.
According to official figures, 9,866,622 answer books were evaluated through the system this year. Of these, 68,018 had to be rescanned because of poor image quality, while 13,583 scripts required manual checking after repeated scanning attempts failed to produce readable copies.
WERE WARNINGS IGNORED?
Teachers involved in a two-day dry run in January reportedly warned that the On-Screen Marking (OSM) system needed one to two more years of preparation before a nationwide rollout. CBSE's governing body had also recommended regional pilot projects, but the board proceeded directly to large-scale implementation.
Challenges surfaced during evaluation. A Physics examiner in Delhi said nearly 100 of the 760 scanned answer books assigned to them had to be rejected because of blurred images, missing pages or incomplete scans.
CBSE says revisions to its OSM tender were necessary to enable implementation after two failed bidding rounds. However, the relaxation of scanning and eligibility norms, coupled with the decision to bypass recommended pilots, has drawn scrutiny.
With thousands of answer books requiring rescanning and manual intervention, questions remain over whether the system was fully prepared for a nationwide examination process involving millions of students.
Just months before rolling out one of the most significant overhauls of the Class 12 evaluation process, CBSE was still unable to find a company to run its ambitious On-Screen Marking (OSM) system.
The board's first tender attracted no bids, while the second failed to produce a technically eligible bidder. It was only after CBSE revised several key requirements in a third tender issued in August 2025, including scanning standards, infrastructure specifications and bidder eligibility criteria, that the process yielded a winner.
The changes ultimately cleared the way for the selection of a vendor barely six months before the OSM system was deployed nationwide for millions of answer scripts, according to documents reviewed by Hindustan Times and officials familiar with the matter.
CBSE officials maintain that the revisions were aimed at correcting shortcomings in the earlier Request for Proposal (RFP) documents and improving the practicality of the tender process, rather than hastening implementation.
WHY DID CBSE HAVE TO FLOAT THREE TENDERS?
CBSE had planned to introduce the OSM system for the 2026 board examinations. However, the first tender failed to attract any bids and was eventually scrapped in accordance with the Government of India's General Financial Rules. The second tender also failed after no bidder met the technical eligibility requirements.
Officials involved in the process later identified operational and procedural issues in the initial RFP documents. These shortcomings were addressed in the third tender, issued in August 2025, which modified several conditions and eventually resulted in successful participation from vendors.
TCS AND COEMPT QUALIFIED IN FINAL ROUND
Minutes of an internal committee meeting dated November 19, 2025, show that Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Coempt Edu Teck cleared the technical evaluation stage in the third tender. Following financial evaluation under the Quality-and-Cost Based Selection framework, Coempt emerged as the successful bidder after submitting the lowest financial bid.
Despite securing the contract, no payment has yet been released to the company. Officials stated that any decision on penalties or contractual action would be taken only after the completion of the re-evaluation process and supplementary examinations.
HOW WERE TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS RELAXED?
Several key requirements were revised between the failed tenders and the August 2025 RFP.
Among the most significant changes was the reduction in the minimum scanning resolution from 300 DPI to 200 DPI, provided the scanned copies remained clearly readable. During pre-bid consultations in May, TCS had argued that even 150 DPI would be sufficient while reducing file sizes and retrieval time.
CBSE also relaxed infrastructure requirements. While the February and May tenders mandated automated or robotic high-speed scanners and scanning without cutting the answer book spine, the August tender dropped the explicit robotic scanner requirement and simply required vendors to provide scanners as part of the IT infrastructure.
WIDENING THE POOL OF ELIGIBLE BIDDERS
The August tender also relaxed software process maturity requirements.
The earlier tenders required bidders to possess Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) Level 5 certification, the highest level of process maturity. The final tender reduced the requirement to Level 3, significantly expanding the number of companies eligible to participate.
CBSE officials rejected suggestions that the changes were designed to favour any specific bidder. They maintained that the selected company met all applicable government norms, was not blacklisted by any agency, and was chosen through a competitive and compliant procurement process.
SPEED VS QUALITY
While technical specifications were eased in some areas, the August tender imposed tougher penalties for operational delays.
The February tender had focused heavily on scanning accuracy, prescribing penalties of Rs 20,000 for wrongly or partially scanned answer books and Rs 50,000 for unscanned scripts. Delays attracted penalties of 6% per day, capped at 30%.
The May tender reduced these penalties considerably, lowering fines for mismatched, partial, and unscanned copies and reducing delay penalties to 1% per day, capped at 10%.
The August tender shifted the emphasis away from individual scanning errors and toward meeting operational deadlines. Vendors could face penalties of Rs 50,000 per working day if answer books from the previous day were not scanned on time, while delays in system rollout attracted penalties of Rs 10 lakh per week.
COULD THE SYSTEM HANDLE THE SCALE?
The volume of answer books processed under OSM highlights the challenge of balancing speed with accuracy.
If approximately 550,000 Physics answer books were scanned within a single day, the system would have needed to process nearly 380 copies every minute around the clock. For English examinations, involving close to 1.7 million answer books, the processing rate would have approached 1,200 copies per minute.
Although scanning operations were distributed across multiple centres nationwide, the scale remained enormous.
According to official figures, 9,866,622 answer books were evaluated through the system this year. Of these, 68,018 had to be rescanned because of poor image quality, while 13,583 scripts required manual checking after repeated scanning attempts failed to produce readable copies.
WERE WARNINGS IGNORED?
Teachers involved in a two-day dry run in January reportedly warned that the On-Screen Marking (OSM) system needed one to two more years of preparation before a nationwide rollout. CBSE's governing body had also recommended regional pilot projects, but the board proceeded directly to large-scale implementation.
Challenges surfaced during evaluation. A Physics examiner in Delhi said nearly 100 of the 760 scanned answer books assigned to them had to be rejected because of blurred images, missing pages or incomplete scans.
CBSE says revisions to its OSM tender were necessary to enable implementation after two failed bidding rounds. However, the relaxation of scanning and eligibility norms, coupled with the decision to bypass recommended pilots, has drawn scrutiny.
With thousands of answer books requiring rescanning and manual intervention, questions remain over whether the system was fully prepared for a nationwide examination process involving millions of students.
