The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) will penalise its on-screen marking (OSM) service provider Coempt Edu Teck for issues with online marking of Class 12 answer sheets.
CBSE officials said the Hyderabad-based company will be fined in line with penalty provisions detailed in its August 2025 tender document.
The tender provides for a raft of cascading financial penalties pinned on redressal timelines, including a fine of ₹1 lakh for every 15-minute delay in rectifying an issue after a CBSE official flags it to the helpdesk.
However, the contract does not contain provisions to blacklist the company for such lapses, as the blacklisting criterion was removed in a corrigendum issued on September 20, 2025.
The development comes after 19-year-old ethical hacker Nisarga Adhikary alleged that answer sheets stored on an Amazon Web Services (AWS) bucket were publicly accessible online.
CBSE officials acknowledged the vulnerabilities and confirmed that the contractor would be penalised.
They said the identified vulnerabilities have been contained, and other exploitable weaknesses are being ruled out.
