IIT panel gives nod to CBSE examiner portal, paves way for re-evaluation

4 min readNew DelhiJun 8, 2026 05:30 AM IST

A recent protest against CBSE’s OSM policy in New Delhi. File

The CBSE has received a final security clearance for its examiner-facing re-evaluation portal after an IIT-led cybersecurity review completed its last round of testing Friday night, clearing the way for reassessment of Class 12 answer scripts, The Indian Express has learnt.

The IIT teams will remain on standby in case fresh issues emerge during the re-evaluation exercise, said sources.

The development comes days after The Indian Express reported on June 5 that CBSE was forced to delay the launch of its Post-Result Activities (PRA) portal after expert teams from two IITs uncovered multiple high-severity vulnerabilities in the Board’s digital systems. It has been learnt that CBSE decided not to use the Coempt EduTeck platform, which powered this year’s controversial On-Screen Marking (OSM) system, for the re-evaluation process. Instead, student and examination data were migrated to infrastructure directly controlled by CBSE, with the re-evaluation workflow redesigned to run through the Board’s own systems.

The IIT-led teams are now preparing a set of recommendations for the Education Ministry and the CBSE, which are expected to call for all future examination software to be designed with cybersecurity safeguards.

According to an official in the know of the developments, the recommendations will focus on ensuring that cybersecurity considerations are incorporated from the earliest stages of software development. The report is also expected to recommend that, once developed, the software should undergo a thorough “red-teaming” exercise by a competent independent group before being deployed.

The CBSE did not respond to requests for a comment.

Notably, the audit of the process employed the “red team-blue team” method, in which the “blue” team – comprising the CBSE’s original developers, experts from IIT Madras and the Digital India Corporation (DIC) – was responsible for fixing vulnerabilities, while the “red” team of IIT Kanpur experts tried to break into the system and identify weaknesses.

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According to the official quoted above, the expert teams completed their final round of testing on Friday night and found no significant vulnerabilities remaining in the system. “From our side, we gave a green signal on Friday night. Whatever we found has been fixed and we could not find anything more. There may be some minor vulnerabilities, but nothing that would have any impact,” the official said.

The examiner-facing platform had remained unavailable even after the PRA portal was launched on June 2. While students were able to submit requests for verification and re-evaluation, answer scripts could not be assigned to examiners for want of security clearance.

Sources said the Board is in the process of informing the examiners that they can begin accessing the system and participate in addressing students’ requests for re-evaluation. Rather than reviewing entire answer books, examiners will be shown only the specific questions flagged by students for re-evaluation, they added. The exercise will be conducted digitally; examiners will access scanned answer scripts on tablets and award marks in accordance with CBSE’s original marking scheme. The marks awarded by the original evaluator will not be visible to the re-evaluating examiner, said the sources.

This is intended to allow an independent assessment and reduce the possibility of bias, the official quoted above said.

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Vidheesha Kuntamalla is a Senior Correspondent at The Indian Express, based in New Delhi. She is known for her investigative reporting on higher education policy, international student immigration, and academic freedom on university campuses. Her work consistently connects policy decisions with lived realities, foregrounding how administrative actions, political pressure, and global shifts affect students, faculty, and institutions.

Professional Profile

Core Beat: Vidheesha covers education in Delhi and nationally, reporting on major public institutions including the University of Delhi (DU), Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), Jamia Millia Islamia, the IITs, and the IIMs. She also reports extensively on private and government schools in the National Capital Region.

Prior to joining The Indian Express, she worked as a freelance journalist in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh for over a year, covering politics, rural issues, women-centric issues, and social justice.

Specialisation: She has developed a strong niche in reporting on the Indian student diaspora, particularly the challenges faced by Indian students and H-1B holders in the United States. Her work examines how geopolitical shifts, immigration policy changes, and campus politics impact global education mobility.

She has also reported widely on:

* Mental health crises and student suicides at IITs

* Policy responses to campus mental health

* Academic freedom and institutional clampdowns at JNU, South Asian University (SAU), and Delhi University

* Curriculum and syllabus changes under the National Education Policy

Her recent reporting has included deeply reported human stories on policy changes during the Trump administration and their consequences for Indian students and researchers in the US.

Reporting Style

Vidheesha is recognised for a human-centric approach to policy reporting, combining investigative depth with intimate storytelling. Her work often highlights the anxieties of students and faculty navigating bureaucratic uncertainty, legal precarity, and institutional pressure. She regularly works with court records, internal documents, official data, and disciplinary frameworks to expose structural challenges to academic freedom.

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1. Express Investigation Series

JNU’s fault lines move from campus to court: University fights students and faculty (November 2025)

An Indian Express investigation found that since 2011, JNU has appeared in over 600 cases before the Delhi High Court, filed by the administration, faculty, staff, students, and contractual workers across the tenures of three Vice-Chancellors.

JNU’s legal wars with students and faculty pile up under 3 V-Cs | Rs 30-lakh fines chill campus dissent (November 2025)

The report traced how steep monetary penalties — now codified in the Chief Proctor’s Office Manual — are reshaping dissent and disciplinary action on campus.

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