‘Mantri Pradhan’s Ministry of Scandals’: Congress flags CBSE answer sheets ‘data breach’

The Congress on Sunday (May 31, 2026) flagged that the answer sheets of two million CBSE Grade 12 students have been shown to be available in the public domain and said it is a “data breach of monumental proportions” which compromises the privacy of the students.

Congress leader Jairam Ramesh said the incompetence and callousness of COEMPT is once again exposed.

“In today's developments on Mantri Pradhan's Ministry of Scandals, the answer sheets of 2 million CBSE Grade 12 students have been shown to be available in the public domain,” Mr. Ramesh said on X.

“This is a data breach of monumental proportions and it compromises the privacy of 2 million students,” he said.

The incompetence and callousness of COEMPT is once again exposed, Mr. Ramesh said, adding that this the very same company which the CBSE gave the contract to after fiddling with the technical specifications in the RFP, likely to benefit COEMPT.

“The answer sheets that have emerged also bear folds and drop shadows — which are associated with scans made via mobile phones rather than scanning machines,” Mr. Ramesh said.

“We know that the third RFP dropped the specification for a robotic scanner. The question then is what kind of scanners did COEMPT eventually use? Why are the scans of such poor quality?” the Congress leader said.

Mr*. Ramesh tagged a post on X which claimed that CBSE people didn't configure their AWS bucket properly and now “we can paginate and enumerate all their media which has 2026 answersheets and question papers”.

The Congress on Saturday (May 30, 2026) alleged an “astonishing mix of incompetence, corruption, and callousness” marked the CBSE's planning and implementation of the Class 12 Board exams, reiterating its demand for Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan's resignation and a full CBI probe into the "emerging scandal".

Ramesh had flagged two investigations — one by CBSE Class 12 student Sarthak Sidhant and another by a newspaper — and said they had raised fresh questions over the CBSE's intent and preparedness in introducing the On-Screen Marking System (OSM) for the Class 12 Board exam.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi had on Friday (May 29, 2026) said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi's silence on the CBSE debacle and inaction against the Education Minister showed he cared only about the survival of his government and not the future of lakhs of students.