CBSE defended its award of the Class 12 digital-evaluation contract to Coempt Edutech after Rahul Gandhi questioned the process and sought an independent investigation. In its May 27 statement, reproduced by the Indian Express, the board said it had followed procurement rules and rejected allegations about the contract.
The board identified August 28, 2025, as the date its request for proposals was placed on the Central Public Procurement portal. It said the successful bidder had qualified through the prescribed process under the General Financial Rules. That was CBSE's explanation of the award, not the finding of an independent procurement audit.
Gandhi renewed his criticism on May 28, saying the response had not answered his questions. ANI reported his call for a judicial inquiry and a Special Investigation Team. He alleged irregularities in results and questioned the government's accountability; those allegations remained his position in the dispute rather than established investigative conclusions.
The controversy also involved specific student complaints about access to evaluated answer books. Business Today reported blurred scans, missing pages, incorrect sequencing and mismatched scripts. Its account cited Coempt chief executive VSN Raju's interview with The News Minute, in which he disputed the suggestion of a failure affecting the entire system.
Raju said the company had identified the scanning location in a student's disputed-script case and was investigating how the problem occurred. He also said a server accessed by a person reporting security flaws was an internal test server, not one used for clients. These were the contractor's explanations, not independently verified technical findings.
The chief executive reported that up to 40,000 faculty members had participated in a practice evaluation. Separately, CBSE said the URL circulating online differed from its evaluation portal. The responses therefore addressed different issues: how the contractor was selected, how answer books were handled and which system was exposed, alongside Gandhi's demand for an outside investigation.
