Congress alleges massive CBSE answer sheet data breach
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The Indian National Congress on Sunday alleged that the answer sheets of nearly two million Class 12 students under the Central Board of Secondary Education had been exposed online, raising serious concerns about student privacy and data security.
Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh described the alleged incident as a data breach of unprecedented scale and accused the Union government of failing to adequately protect sensitive student information.
In a post on X, Ramesh alleged that answer sheets of around two million CBSE Class 12 students had become accessible in the public domain. He directed criticism at Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, claiming the episode reflected serious lapses in the functioning of the education ministry, The New Indian Express reported.
Ramesh further alleged that the incident highlighted what he described as the incompetence and negligence of COEMPT, the company contracted by CBSE to handle digitisation and evaluation work.
According to him, the leaked answer sheets appeared to contain folds and shadow effects, which he argued suggested that they may have been scanned using mobile phones rather than specialised professional equipment. He also questioned the type of scanners ultimately used by the company, noting that a robotic scanner requirement had reportedly been removed from a later tender document.
The Congress leader additionally referred to allegations circulating on social media that an improperly configured storage bucket had allowed public access to CBSE-related files, including answer sheets and question papers from the 2026 examinations.
A day earlier, the Congress had accused CBSE of displaying what it called a combination of incompetence, corruption and negligence in implementing its On-Screen Marking (OSM) system for Class 12 examinations. The party reiterated its demand for the resignation of Dharmendra Pradhan and called for a probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation.
Ramesh reportedly said that separate investigations conducted by a Class 12 student and a media organisation had raised concerns about both the board’s preparedness and the rationale behind the introduction of the digital evaluation system.
Earlier, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi had also criticised Prime Minister Narendra Modi for not publicly addressing the issue, alleging that the government was prioritising political considerations over the interests of millions of students.