CBSE admits answer sheet mix-up after Class 12 student trolled online, called ‘Pakistani’

A Delhi student who was trolled, abused and called a “Pakistani’ on social media after flagging discrepancies in the Central Board of Secondary Education’s (CBSE) new On-Screen Marking (OSM) system was vindicated on Monday after the board acknowledged that a technical issue had led to uploading an incorrect scanned copy against his roll number.

In an email to the student, Vedant Shrivastava, CBSE joint secretary (coordination) acknowledged the mismatch and said his marks would be revised shortly. HT has reviewed the communication sent to the student.

A senior CBSE official confirmed the error but declined to elaborate why the mix-up happened.

“We communicated to Vedant Shrivastava today and have sent the correct answer copy to him on his email. His marks will be updated accordingly,” the official said on condition of anonymity.

The official, however, declined to explain how the wrong Physics answer sheet was uploaded against Shrivastava’s roll number, saying, “We will delve into it and share details later.”

The CBSE’s acknowledgement comes amid growing scrutiny of the OSM system rolled out this year for Class 12 board exam evaluations as part of the board’s push for faster, digitised assessment and post-result transparency. The board had said the system would reduce human error and improve access to answer scripts during re-evaluation.

However, several students have since reported issues ranging from blurry scans and missing pages to mismatched answer sheets. Shrivastava was one of them.

He had applied for scanned copies of his answer sheets on May 19 after securing what he described as “unexpectedly low marks” in Physics when CBSE declared Class 12 results on May 13.

When he received the scanned copies on May 23, Shrivastava noticed that the Physics script uploaded against his roll number wasn’t his.

He highlighted the discrepancy in a post on X, sharing side-by-side screenshots of the scripts from his English and Computer Science answer sheets to establish that the handwriting in the Physics paper was not his.

“I studied for an entire year. I sacrificed sleep, peace of mind, outings, everything for these exams. And now I don’t even know whether my actual Physics paper was checked. Do students really deserve this?” he said in a post on X on May 23.

‘Called a Pakistani, heavily trolled’

The post garnered more than 3.2 million views by Monday evening and quickly snowballed into a social media controversy.

Many users accused him of attempting to malign CBSE and questioned why his X account location showed “South Asia”, with some branding him “anti-national” and calling him “Pakistani”.

A location setting on X can display broad regional identifiers such as “South Asia” depending on account preferences and app settings.

“My son faced great difficulty even applying for re-evaluation. After getting the scanned copies, he could not sleep properly and decided to raise the matter on X by posting screenshots of his answer scripts,” Shrivastava’s father Sanjay Shrivastava told HT.

“He was called Pakistani and heavily trolled because his account location was showing South Asia. His brother later clarified this was due to a technical issue while setting up the account. It has taken a toll on his mental health and he is staying away from his phone now,” he added.

Vedant’s brother, Siddhanta, later put out posts in his brother’s support, saying they had just started his X account to flag the discrepancy.

“I am the brother of Vedant and I am appalled seeing how people are calling us Pakistani. Vedant did not even have Twitter because he was busy studying instead of tweeting. We created the account only to raise his genuine issue,” he said.

CBSE has maintained that the OSM system has improved transparency and efficiency in evaluation. At a press conference on May 17, board officials defended the system and said it would also be used during the re-evaluation process.

Monday was the last day for students to obtain scanned copies and raising objections against questions in different subjects. CBSE evaluators will check objections and revise marks by May 29.

On Sunday, Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan announced that a team of professors and technical experts from the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) Madras and IIT Kanpur would assist CBSE in resolving glitches in its post-result services portal, amid complaints from students and parents over technical issues in the re-evaluation process and lower-than-expected scores in Class 12 exams under the new digital evaluation system.

The CBSE Class 12 results, declared on May 13, saw the overall pass percentage falling to 85.20%, down 3.19 percentage points from 88.39% last year — the lowest since 2019.