New Delhi, June 1 (IANS) Demanding the resignation of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, the Congress on Monday questioned the CBSE’s intentions to penalise the contractor allegedly responsible for laxity in the process related to the On-Screen Marking (OSM) system.

The party also repeated the demand for the resignation of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan. “The Prime Minister has never been known to hold himself or his colleagues accountable to any standards of ethics and integrity. But Minister Pradhan should resign to fulfil his ‘rajadharma’,” said Congress MP Jairam Ramesh on X.

A day after the Board said that it had taken complaints related to mismatched answer sheets and other lapses related to the revaluation process, Ramesh said, “After denying cybersecurity vulnerabilities in the On Screen Marking (OSM) system, CBSE has finally acknowledged that the system was compromised.”

“But what action is it going to take against its contractor, COEMPT? Nothing much,” he said, naming the contractor which carried out the process for the CBSE.

Attaching a news clipping related to the CBSE to penalise the contractor, Ramesh said, “It appears that those benefiting from COEMPT within CBSE and the Ministry of Education were already aware that COEMPT would not prove capable for this job.”

Ramesh said, “In its RFP of August 2025, CBSE had reserved the right to blacklist vendors who failed to complete the work effectively. But in September, CBSE issued a corrigendum removing its own right to blacklist vendors.”

“This seems like an incomprehensible, government-backed effort to protect COEMPT, which had begun even before COEMPT officially received the contract,” said Ramesh.

Attacking the Union Education Minister, the Congress General Secretary in charge of Communications said, “How long will the country tolerate Minister Pradhan, whose ministry not only allowed such unimaginable irregularities in the tender process but also shielded them, forcing lakhs of students to pay the price by losing their mental peace? Minister Pradhan has become a living example of arrogance and incompetence, stubbornly prioritising his political agenda over his responsibility to the nation.”

–IANS

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