'Mantri' Pradhan's continuation in office speaks of his desire for power: Cong on CBSE OSM row

NEW DELHI: The Congress on Saturday said Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan's continuation in office only speaks of his desire for power and accused him of being "incompetent" in running a "compromised ministry".

In a post on X, Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh said that had the education ministry shown more integrity in organising the CBSE exams, the entire debacle that stressed lakhs of students across the country could have been avoided.

"The skeletons in the Education Ministry's closet are tumbling out fast and furious," Ramesh said in his post while citing media reports that COEMTP submitted two cybersecurity certificates to CBSE to satisfy the tender's cybersecurity requirements.

"It is now reported that both these certificates were tied to other clients. One of them had expired (it was nearly two years old when submitted by COEMPT) and the other was audited as a temporary application rather than as an application in a production environment.

"The CBSE, instead of calling out this deception, awarded the contract to COEMPT at inflated rates," the Congress leader alleged.

He said Gen-Z ethical hackers had exposed critical flaws in cybersecurity all the way back to February 2025, which the CBSE denied until it could no longer do so.

"In fact, in a final admission that COEMPT's portal was irretrievably compromised, the CBSE has now stopped using COEMPT's platform and built its own website for the re-evaluation process," he claimed, citing media reports.

Ramesh said if the 'Mantri' Pradhan's Ministry had shown more integrity in organising the CBSE exams, the On-Screen Marking (OSM) system, and the revaluation process, the whole debacle, which has stressed lakhs of students and their families, could have been avoided.

"Mantri Pradhan's continuation in office only speaks to his shameless desire for power. He has been totally exposed as an arrogant and incompetent hack running a deeply compromised Ministry," Ramesh alleged.

The Congress on Friday said that only Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan can answer as to why the CBSE was "made to adopt an expensive OSM system at inflated rates", and asserted that he must resign so that an independent investigation can take place.

Amid a row over the OSM system in the Class 12 exams, the CBSE late on Friday extended the last date for submission of applications for verification and re-evaluation of Class 12 answer sheets by one day till June 7.

The move comes after several students flagged issues in accessing answer books and applying for verification and re-evaluation on the CBSE's post-result services portal launched on June 2.