The Central Board of Secondary Education portal through which Class XII examinees were to request the re-evaluation of their answers did not start functioning even on Friday, the last of the four days the board had given the students for the purpose.
In the evening, the CBSE said the portal would start functioning from June 1. The delay, however, threatens to rob many students of the chance to get admitted to their colleges of choice.
The embattled board has asked the principals of its affiliated schools to upload reels showing them reading out a CBSE-dictated message that assures the students that all is well with the evaluation system. Many principals have already done so.
“If the CBSE accepts the requests for re-evaluation on June 1, they will take a week to re-evaluate the answers and declare the revised results,” a Delhi school principal told The Telegraph.
“By that time many students will have missed their opportunity for admission to an institution of their choice. The CBSE is playing with the students’ future.”
A student who had a Common University Entrance Test on Friday said she had spent a frustrating hour before the computer screen in the morning, trying unsuccessfully to submit a request to the CBSE for an answer re-evaluation.
“I was unable to focus on preparing for my CUET papers for the last few days because of the low (Class XII) marks awarded to me,” the student, who later sat her CUET papers for business studies, accountancy and mathematics, said.
“I wasted a whole hour early this morning trying to submit requests for re-evaluation. After the (CUET) exam, I tried again but failed. This is frustrating.”
The problems began with the CBSE’s introduction this year of the on-screen marking (OSM) system for Class XII answer sheets.
Many students felt they had been awarded low marks because of flaws in the new system that involves the scanning of answer sheets, their online transmission to examiners and assessment on the screen.
But the portal through which the students had to apply to obtain copies of their marked answer sheets — the first step before re-evaluation can be sought — worked inconsistently, prompting several extensions of the original May 19-22 deadline.
Among those able to obtain their answer sheet copies,two alleged their papers had been swapped with those of others’, leading to poor marks — an allegation the boardhas accepted.
The CBSE says it has so far provided answer sheet copies to nearly 4 lakh students.
The window for submitting requests for re-evaluation was May 26 to May 29 but the portal remained non-functional.
At 4.50pm, the CBSE tweeted: “In order to ensure a transparent and glitch-free process for verification and revaluation of answer books of students who intend to submit their applications on the Post-Result Activities portal, it has been decided that the designated portal will now be operational from 1st June 2026.”
It added, without a sense of irony: “This is to ensure the highest standards and protocols of evaluation.”
The IITs are to declare the JEE Advanced results on June 1 and begin the counselling and seat allocation process from June 2.
To be eligible for IIT admission, a student must have scored 75 per cent or made the top 20 percentile in their Class XII board exam — irrespective of their rank in the JEE Advanced.
The school principal who spoke to this newspaper flagged the possibility of low marking under the OSM system because of blurred or illegibly scanned copies, among other causes.
It will be unfortunate if many students miss out on IIT admission, despite a good JEE Advanced showing, by narrowly falling short of 75 per cent in their boards because of the vagaries of the new digital marking system, the principal said.
“Many universities, too, admit students on the basis of their Class XII marks — and they have already begun their admission process,” the principal said.
‘Bumps’
The 384-word message the CBSE has sent to principals for circulation in the form of reels praises the OSM system and dismisses the problems as “implementation bumps”.
“This year, CBSE has taken a massive step toward modernising our examination ecosystem by introducing the On-Screen Marking (OSM) system,” the text says, adding that nearly 98 lakh answer sheets were digitised.
“…However, as with the rollout of any technology on such an unprecedented scale, I know that a few implementation bumps have caused concern....”
The message gets the principals to issue a personal assurance: “Please, do not panic. I want to reassure every student and parent that no child will be allowed to suffer due to a technical error. CBSE has been highly proactive, empathetic, and communicative regarding these teething issues.”