PASIR PUTEH, June 7 — Universiti Pendidikan Sultan Idris (UPSI) has published a book titled UPSI Berduka, documenting the tragic road accident involving its students in Gerik, Perak, as a reference and guide for future crisis management and emergency response efforts.UPSI vice-chancellor Prof Datuk Dr Md Amin Md Taff said the publication, which took nearly 10 months to complete, details the chronology of the tragedy, the seven phases of crisis management undertak
PASIR PUTEH, June 7 — Universiti Pendidikan Sultan Idris (UPSI) has published a book titled UPSI Berduka, documenting the tragic road accident involving its students in Gerik, Perak, as a reference and guide for future crisis management and emergency response efforts.
UPSI vice-chancellor Prof Datuk Dr Md Amin Md Taff said the publication, which took nearly 10 months to complete, details the chronology of the tragedy, the seven phases of crisis management undertaken by the university in collaboration with various agencies, and personal accounts from those directly affected by the incident.
He said the book serves as a comprehensive record of the experiences of victims’ families, survivors, volunteers, rescue personnel, frontline workers and other parties involved throughout the management of the tragedy.
“This book does not merely recount the experiences of one group, but brings together the voices of the many individuals involved from the first day of the tragedy until the completion of the various processes concerning the victims and their families.
“We hope it will serve as a useful reference and guideline should a similar incident occur in the future, although we sincerely hope such a tragedy never happens again,” he told reporters after the “UPSI Tautan Kasih dan Ukhwah” programme with families affected by the Gerik tragedy in Tok Bali today.
Md Amin said the book is expected to be officially launched by Higher Education Minister Datuk Seri Dr Zambry Abdul Kadir at the UPSI campus in the near future.
Meanwhile, he revealed that the “Tabung UPSI Berduka” fund, established in the aftermath of the tragedy, had successfully raised about RM2 million in contributions from various parties since the incident occurred.
The funds have been distributed in stages to all 42 affected victims and their next of kin, including injured students and the families of those who lost their lives.
“Today, we are distributing the remaining balance of RM210,000 from the fund, with each recipient receiving RM5,000 to ensure fair and equitable assistance for all affected parties,” he said.
He added that the fund will be officially closed in August, although donations will continue to be accepted until then.
In a related development, Md Amin said the Ministry of Higher Education (MOHE), through a special task force established following the tragedy, had introduced several measures aimed at enhancing student safety.
Among the initiatives implemented are discouraging students from travelling home during late-night hours, requiring the reporting of bus rental arrangements to universities, and introducing greater flexibility for online learning before and after short holiday periods.
He said these measures are intended to reduce the risks associated with rushed travel arrangements while ensuring that student welfare and safety remain a top priority.
The tragedy occurred in the early hours of June 9, 2025, when a bus carrying UPSI students travelling from Jertih, Terengganu, to Tanjung Malim, Perak, was involved in an accident with another vehicle along the East-West Highway near Banun, Gerik. The crash claimed the lives of 15 students and shocked the nation. — Bernama
Keeping Sanskrit as an option in all KVs ensures a smooth transition for students facing frequent transfers, letting others choose regional languages; some KVs face challenges of limited teachers and resources
Keeping Sanskrit as an option in all KVs ensures a smooth transition for students facing frequent transfers, letting others choose regional languages; some KVs face challenges of limited teachers and resources
Hong Kong’s Hospital Authority has suspended a trainee doctor and a resident physician after their alleged professional misconduct went viral on social media.
Caritas Medical Centre. File photo: GovHK.
In a statement issued on Wednesday evening, the HA said that it had noticed some social media posts discussing an intern doctor’s alleged professional misconduct at different hospitals.
“The HA considers the matter extremely serious, affecting the professional image of healthcare staff,
Hong Kong’s Hospital Authority has suspended a trainee doctor and a resident physician after their alleged professional misconduct went viral on social media.
Caritas Medical Centre. File photo: GovHK.
In a statement issued on Wednesday evening, the HA said that it had noticed some social media posts discussing an intern doctor’s alleged professional misconduct at different hospitals.
“The HA considers the matter extremely serious, affecting the professional image of healthcare staff,” the statement said.
The authority said it had reported to the police the suspected case of “someone who logged into the Clinical Management System at Caritas Medical Centre (CMC) with another person’s account and accessed patient records at Tuen Mun Hospital without authorisation.”
A photo shared by an intern doctor shows her performing an X-ray on her own knee. Photo: Simon_yuen via Thread.
“The HA has immediately suspended the clinical duties of the intern doctor concerned and a resident doctor at Tuen Mun Hospital, and has also suspended their access right[s] to the system in order to protect patient and system security,” it said.
“The HA has notified the medical school of the relevant university to follow up on the intern doctor’s assessment of being fit for practice.”
According to the statement, before the suspensions, the HA had previously issued a serious warning to the trainee doctor for committing an inappropriate act during an internship at Ruttonjee Hospital and taken disciplinary action against the intern doctor and another resident doctor at CMC.
It had also taken disciplinary action against the intern doctor and another resident doctor for misconduct at CMC.
The HA’s move comes after a trainee doctor, who published videos documenting her medical internship, allegedly used medical equipment without authorisation to X-ray her own knee and posted a photo of the procedure on social media.
She was also suspected of asking her boyfriend, a resident doctor at Tuen Mun Hospital, to come to Ruttonjee Hospital, where she was interning, to assist her with a medical procedure.
Ruttonjee Hospital in Hong Kong. File photo: GovHK.
According to netizens, the intern doctor is a social media influencer known as Angel the Medic on YouTube and Instagram.
As of Thursday, all videos on the YouTube channel had disappeared, and the Instagram account had gone offline.
A 6th-grade student takes notes during an English class in San Juan, Puerto Rico, on November 6, 2017. | Ricardo Arduengo/AFP via Getty Images
My parents started dating back in the ’80s and for a while, they were long-distance. Since this was before our current era of smartphones and email, one of the ways they kept in touch was mail: My father would send cassette tapes to my mom with songs that reminded him of her, and they would both send letters reminiscing about the last time they we
A 6th-grade student takes notes during an English class in San Juan, Puerto Rico, on November 6, 2017. | Ricardo Arduengo/AFP via Getty Images
My parents started dating back in the ’80s and for a while, they were long-distance. Since this was before our current era of smartphones and email, one of the ways they kept in touch was mail: My father would send cassette tapes to my mom with songs that reminded him of her, and they would both send letters reminiscing about the last time they were able to spend time together.
I love these letters because it’s a peek into my parents’ lives before me. I can feel the paper. I can see my mom’s beautiful penmanship. And from time to time, they also remind me that many of us would have to think long and hard to recall the last time we wrote something by hand.
According to Shawn Datchuk, a professor of special education at the University of Iowa and former director of the Iowa Reading Research Center, schoolchildren are writing less, too — and forget about cursive.
“The vast majority of states have adopted a national set of academic standards that specifically focus in on teaching handwriting during kindergarten and extends a little bit past the first grade,” he told Vox. “On average, teachers report spending as little as 10 minutes a week on teaching handwriting explicitly in kindergarten classrooms.”
This week, we explore how the ways we teach handwriting in the classroom have changed over time, and the impact it’s having on education as a whole. Plus: What are we missing when we don’t write by hand? We find out all of that and more on the latest episode of Explain It to Me, Vox’s weekly call-in podcast.
Below is an excerpt of my conversation with Datchuk, edited for length and clarity. You can listen to the full episode, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you’d like to submit a question, send an email to askvox@vox.com or call 1-800-618-8545.
Ten minutes does not seem like a lot of time. Looking back on my own education, it felt like so much more. When did handwriting become less of a priority?
Changes really started to happen around 2010, and that was when the Common Core academic standards were adopted across the United States. In those standards there was a push for students to quickly move past handwriting and to start to adopt typing. The standards explicitly say students should make this transition to keyboarding right after the first and second grade.
That’s so early!
Right? Then in those standards, it goes from print to keyboarding and completely drops cursive handwriting.
I remember being so excited for third grade in particular because where I went to school, that was when they started teaching cursive. Is it just not being taught at all anymore in K-12 schools?
Over the past several years, there’s been a swing back towards cursive. The latest count is approximately 26 states across the United States have passed some sort of legislation reinserting cursive into their statewide curriculum.
There is some compelling evidence that handwriting, whether it’s print or cursive, is closely related to reading development. Following the Covid-19 pandemic across the nation, we saw dips in reading scores. There is some thought by educational stakeholders and legislatures that perhaps if we focus on handwriting — in this case, cursive — maybe that will improve student reading scores.
I also hear consistently from parents, guardians, and teachers that they’re very interested in minimizing screen time. Then there’s also a camp of people out there who may have a strong patriotic inclination and they say that, well, the Declaration of Independence is written in cursive, so we should teach kids cursive because it looks so different than print. That way they can study the founding documents.
You’ve worked in education for a very long time, and I’m curious what you make of the changing trends in handwriting. Is pen and paper actually better compared to screens? Do we know if one is better than the other?
That’s a complicated question, but for younger kids who are learning how to read, there does seem to be some benefit in specifically using pencil and paper. There is such a close connection between reading and writing. When students learn how to handwrite, they’re basically committing to memory not only what a letter looks like, but also its name.
Let’s say you’re teaching a student, “This is a letter M,” and then they learn and commit to memory, “Oh, these are the different strokes or loops of M, and that also makes the mmm sound.” They’re committing that to memory, and so that allows them to draw on that for when they’re reading.
For older high school students, there also seems to be some logic in how distracting screens can be. I taught high school before. I also currently teach undergraduate students, and there’s a lot of different things that pop up on screens, whether it’s online shopping or checking messages or checking emails that can distract from learning important content.
Now, let me kind of flip over the other side. Screens are definitely here to stay, and I think pencils and paper are also here to stay. Artificial intelligence is here to stay. That also adds a whole other layer of complexity to this. For instructors and parents and guardians, perhaps the better question to ask is not so much which is better, but “How much time do my kids need with each one of these ways to communicate, whether it’s with a paper and pencil or whether it’s with a computer or tablet or smartphone?”
We talked a little bit about this evolution of technology. You have pen and paper, you have computers, you have smartphones, now we have AI. Is AI another reason to keep handwriting alive?
Unfortunately, I think so. With the rise of artificial intelligence, computer-based writing brings up difficult-to-determine questions on authorship. Lots of professors are struggling with questions on when we do a new assignment, how much of it is computer-generated versus how much of it is attributable to the hard work that students have done.
I definitely see a shift back to the blue books. I know that the [University of] Iowa bookstore here has started stocking blue books on their shelves for the first time since I’ve been here, and I’ve been here over a decade.
What do you think students lose if they stop writing by hand regularly?
Besides the academic benefits that I discussed earlier, I do think that one of the strongest reasons that I can think of to engage in handwriting is what we consider a moral reason: Handwriting is so deeply personal to all of us. I think that’s one of the reasons why a handwritten note resonates so emotionally with us as humans.
For instance, when my mom had a recent birthday, I sent her a handwritten card. On Mother’s Day, my sons and I wrote little notes and my 4-year-old drew a picture for my wife. And then, I’m in my mid-forties. One of the rites of passage of being a middle-aged person now [is that] my wife and I went through the process of getting a living will put together. Last night I was making handwritten notes on the living will because I knew that it was something that I really needed to think through carefully and deliberately.
What we kind of see with even lots of college-age students is that when you engage in writing with a pen or pencil, you tend to synthesize or think more deeply about that information than when you’re just typing.
A Delhi court has pulled up the Central Bureau of Investigation for closing its probe into the 2024 UGC-NET paper leak case despite recording that an accused had allegedly collected money from candidates by promising leaked question papers.The development comes amid a nationwide controversy over the cancellation of this year’s NEET-UG examination following allegations of paper leaks and malpractice.Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate Neetu Nagar at Delhi’s Rouse Avenue Court on Friday sought a
A Delhi court has pulled up the Central Bureau of Investigation for closing its probe into the 2024 UGC-NET paper leak case despite recording that an accused had allegedly collected money from candidates by promising leaked question papers.
The development comes amid a nationwide controversy over the cancellation of this year’s NEET-UG examination following allegations of paper leaks and malpractice.
Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate Neetu Nagar at Delhi’s Rouse Avenue Court on Friday sought a written explanation from the CBI over the closure report filed in January 2025.
In an order dated 15 May, the court pointed to paragraph 16.30 of the agency’s closure report, which stated that accused Nikhil Soni had allegedly “collected money from the aspirants of the UGC-NET 2024 by luring them on pretext of giving/leaking the exam paper”.
“It is manifest that crime has been committed as per the contents of para 16.30 but still the investigating officer has ignored the same and filed a closure report for reasons best known to him,” the judge observed.
Following the court’s remarks, the investigating officer sought time to submit a written explanation. The matter has now been listed for hearing on 21 May.
Probe had concluded evidence was ‘doctored’
The UGC-NET examination held on 18 June 2024 for more than nine lakh candidates across 317 cities was cancelled by the Centre a day later after inputs from the Ministry of Home Affairs suggested that the integrity of the examination “may have been compromised”.
The alleged evidence involved screenshots purportedly showing the question paper circulating on Telegram before the examination.
The CBI, which took over the investigation on 23 June 2024, later concluded that there was no actual paper leak.
In its closure report filed earlier this year, the agency claimed forensic analysis showed the screenshots had been digitally manipulated by a school student using a mobile application to falsely create the impression that the paper had been leaked before the exam.
The agency said its findings were based on analysis of digital trails and Telegram messages linked to claims of the leak.
The court’s observations have now reignited scrutiny over the handling of major examination leak cases at a time when the Centre is facing mounting criticism over alleged irregularities in competitive examinations.
Delhi court questions CBI closure of 2024 UGC-NET paper leak case amid NEET controversy
Hong Kong police have launched a two-week campaign to clamp down on jaywalking and inattentive driving following a surge in fatal traffic accidents over the first five months of this year.
A road crossing in Hong Kong. File photo: Lea Mok/HKFP
Police said on Friday that two law enforcement operations, codenamed “Clearview” and “Autobinder,” would run until June 19, targeting careless driving and reckless road crossing.
“As of May 31 this year, the number of deaths from traffic accident
Hong Kong police have launched a two-week campaign to clamp down on jaywalking and inattentive driving following a surge in fatal traffic accidents over the first five months of this year.
A road crossing in Hong Kong. File photo: Lea Mok/HKFP
Police said on Friday that two law enforcement operations, codenamed “Clearview” and “Autobinder,” would run until June 19, targeting careless driving and reckless road crossing.
“As of May 31 this year, the number of deaths from traffic accidents in Hong Kong reached 51, up 42 per cent from the same period last year,” police said in a Chinese-language media briefing. “Pedestrian deaths accounted for half of the total.”
Police said an analysis showed that the primary causes of the high death toll were jaywalking and careless driving, with commercial vehicles identified as the most frequent vehicle type involved in fatal incidents.
During the operations, the police force will strengthen patrols using unmarked police vehicles, conducting strict enforcement against speeding, tailgating, using mobile phones while driving, and other forms of careless driving.
Hong Kong Police Force. Photo: Kyle Lam/HKFP.
Police urged professional drivers to stay focused behind the wheel and adhere to traffic rules, and called on pedestrians to avoid jaywalking, weaving through traffic or ignoring traffic signals.
Pedestrians should utilise designated pedestrian crossings, subways and footbridges, police added.
The maximum penalty for careless driving in Hong Kong is a HK$5,000 fine and six months’ imprisonment. Jaywalking carries a fine of up to HK$2,000.
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Sunday raised questions over a fire at the School of Planning and Architecture (SPA) building in central Delhi and sought to link the incident to the ongoing controversy surrounding the conduct of CBSE and NEET examinations.The party expressed concern after reports emerged of a fire at the SPA building, which also houses offices of the Union Ministry of Education.Initial media reports, citing information from the Delhi Fire Service (DFS), stated that the blaze had br
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Sunday raised questions over a fire at the School of Planning and Architecture (SPA) building in central Delhi and sought to link the incident to the ongoing controversy surrounding the conduct of CBSE and NEET examinations.
The party expressed concern after reports emerged of a fire at the SPA building, which also houses offices of the Union Ministry of Education.
Initial media reports, citing information from the Delhi Fire Service (DFS), stated that the blaze had broken out in the Education Ministry's office located within the building.
AAP leaders subsequently suggested that the incident could be connected to the controversy over examination conduct and evaluation processes that have come under scrutiny in recent weeks.
However, it was later clarified that the fire had not occurred inside the Ministry of Education's office premises.
Authorities said the blaze took place elsewhere in the building and did not affect the ministry's functioning.
VIDEO | Fire broke out in the School of Planning and Architecture (SPA) building in central Delhi earlier today, prompting an emergency response involving multiple fire tenders, ambulances and police personnel.
The clarification came after several reports described the incident as a fire at the Education Ministry office, triggering speculation on social media and political reactions.
The AAP did not provide evidence linking the fire to the CBSE-NEET controversy but questioned the timing of the incident amid growing opposition criticism over examination-related issues.
The CBSE has recently faced scrutiny over its On-Screen Marking (OSM) system after some students alleged discrepancies in answer sheets, while opposition parties have also targeted the Centre over various examination-related controversies.
Officials have not indicated any connection between the fire and examination matters.
Further details regarding the cause of the blaze and the extent of damage, if any, were awaited.
AAP links fire at SPA building to CBSE-NEET row; ministry says office unaffected
The death toll from a giant explosion at a fireworks factory in central China rose to 26, with 61 more injured, officials said Tuesday.
Screenshot of social media footage showing continuous explosions accompanied by a vast cloud of smoke rising high into the air in a rural area surrounded by mountains. Photo: Screenshot, via Weibo.
The explosion occurred at around 4:43 pm on Monday at the Liuyang Huasheng Fireworks Manufacturing and Display Company in Liuyang, Hunan province, state broadc
The death toll from a giant explosion at a fireworks factory in central China rose to 26, with 61 more injured, officials said Tuesday.
Screenshot of social media footage showing continuous explosions accompanied by a vast cloud of smoke rising high into the air in a rural area surrounded by mountains. Photo: Screenshot, via Weibo.
The explosion occurred at around 4:43 pm on Monday at the Liuyang Huasheng Fireworks Manufacturing and Display Company in Liuyang, Hunan province, state broadcaster CCTV reported.
Following the blast, all fireworks makers in Hunan’s provincial capital Changsha, which administers Liuyang, had been ordered to stop production ahead of safety inspections, CCTV said.
Videos on social media from Monday showed continuous explosions accompanied by a vast cloud of smoke rising high into the air in a rural area surrounded by mountains.
Drone footage from CCTV taken a day later showed a swathe of smouldering debris where buildings had stood, with rescue workers and excavators scouring the rubble.
Smoke continued to rise from some buildings left standing, many of them with their roofs blown off.
Changsha mayor Chen Bozhang told a news conference on Tuesday afternoon that another five people had died since earlier reports that 21 were killed.
“We feel deeply grieved and filled with remorse,” Chen said, adding that search and rescue work was “basically complete”.
The central government had sent experts to guide rescue efforts, while more than 480 rescuers had been urgently dispatched to the site, according to CCTV.
Screenshot of drone footage from China’s state broadcaster CCTV. Photo: Screenshot, via CCTV.
They had established a 3-kilometre (1.9-mile) control zone around the site and evacuated people nearby.
Police had apprehended the company’s management while investigations into the cause of the accident continue, CCTV said.
President Xi Jinping had called for “all-out efforts” to treat the injured, search for missing persons, and for those responsible to be held accountable, state news agency Xinhua reported.
Liuyang is a major fireworks hub, producing around 60 percent of the fireworks sold in China and 70 percent of those exported.
Industrial accidents, including in the fireworks industry, are common in China due to lax safety standards.
Last year, an explosion at another fireworks factory in Hunan killed nine people, and in 2023, three people were killed after blasts struck residential buildings in the northern city of Tianjin.
In February, separate explosions at fireworks shops in Hubei and Jiangsu provinces killed 12 and eight people.
GONZALES, La. — Magnolia Driving Academy is announcing repeated sell-outs for its teen driver education classes, reflecting strong local demand from families seeking structured, safety-focused driving instruction for new drivers in the Gonzales area.
The academy’s Teen Driver Education program is a 38-hour course that includes 30 hours of classroom instruction and 8 hours of behind-the-wheel driving. Students are required to obtain a Temporary Instruction Permit, commonly known as a TIP card
GONZALES, La. — Magnolia Driving Academy is announcing repeated sell-outs for its teen driver education classes, reflecting strong local demand from families seeking structured, safety-focused driving instruction for new drivers in the Gonzales area.
The academy’s Teen Driver Education program is a 38-hour course that includes 30 hours of classroom instruction and 8 hours of behind-the-wheel driving. Students are required to obtain a Temporary Instruction Permit, commonly known as a TIP card, before the first day of class, and all teen classes require a parent meeting before the course begins.
Magnolia Driving Academy has continued to post upcoming teen driver education sessions throughout 2026, including multiple four-day class formats. The course is designed to help students build defensive driving skills, complete state-approved driving routes, prepare for Louisiana’s written and driving exam requirements, and develop safe driving habits that extend beyond test day.
The repeated sell-outs occur at a time when teen driver safety remains a concern for families, schools, and communities. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, drivers ages 16 to 19 have a fatal crash rate almost three times as high as drivers ages 20 and older per mile driven. That risk profile helps explain why many parents prioritize structured instruction, supervised practice, and clear expectations before a teen begins driving independently.
Magnolia Driving Academy’s teen program emphasizes mastery of defensive driving, hazard recognition, behind-the-wheel instruction, test preparedness, and long-term driving habits. The academy teaches students to anticipate, identify, and respond to potential hazards before they become dangerous, while also helping new drivers gain confidence across structured driving routes.
“Families are looking for driver education that goes beyond checking a box,” said a representative of Magnolia Driving Academy. “Our goal is to help students understand responsibility, build confidence behind the wheel, and learn habits that support safer driving long after the course is complete.”
National safety data also reinforces the importance of early driver preparation. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported that 2,034 young drivers died in traffic crashes in 2022, and an estimated 180,353 young drivers were injured. While no single course can eliminate every roadway risk, structured education and guided practice can help students better understand the decisions, distractions, and road conditions they may encounter as new drivers.
Magnolia Driving Academy’s teen driver education classes are designed for students seeking a state-approved path to licensing while receiving practical instruction from an experienced local team. The program includes classroom learning, behind-the-wheel practice, and preparation for the state’s written and driving exams, including the minimum passing standards outlined in the academy’s course materials.
Parents are also included in the process through the required parent meeting before class begins. This gives families an opportunity to understand course expectations, student responsibilities, licensing requirements, and the role of continued supervision as teens gain experience behind the wheel.
The academy’s course list shows multiple upcoming teen driver education sessions, with the course fee listed at $499. Due to repeated sell-outs, families interested in upcoming sessions are encouraged to review available dates and plan enrollment early.
Families who want to learn more about the program can visit Magnolia Driving Academy’s teen driver education course in Gonzales page for course details, requirements, class information, and enrollment options.
Magnolia Driving Academy is located at 9094 S. St. Landry Ave., Gonzales, LA 70737. The academy can be reached by phone at (225) 363-7407 or by email at jeremy@magnoliadrivingacademy.com.
About Magnolia Driving Academy
Magnolia Driving Academy provides teen driver education, adult driver education, behind-the-wheel instruction, and road skills testing services in Gonzales, Louisiana. The locally owned academy supports students and families with structured driver education, state-approved driving instruction, and practical preparation for safe, confident driving.
Media Contact
Magnolia Driving Academy 9094 S. St. Landry Ave. Gonzales, LA 70737 Phone: (225) 363-7407 Email: jeremy@magnoliadrivingacademy.com
On 2 June 2026, hours after 17-year-old Sarthak Sidhant, a schoolboy from Ranchi, made a presentation to the parliamentary standing committee on education, the government transferred the chairman and secretary of the CBSE (Central Board of Secondary Education), both IAS officers. It also announced a departmental inquiry committee to look into the hurried introduction of a digital evaluation system that led to this fiasco.Since the CBSE Class 12 results were announced on 13 May, lakhs of harried
On 2 June 2026, hours after 17-year-old Sarthak Sidhant, a schoolboy from Ranchi, made a presentation to the parliamentary standing committee on education, the government transferred the chairman and secretary of the CBSE (Central Board of Secondary Education), both IAS officers. It also announced a departmental inquiry committee to look into the hurried introduction of a digital evaluation system that led to this fiasco.
Since the CBSE Class 12 results were announced on 13 May, lakhs of harried students have reported totalling errors, unmarked questions, mismatched answer sheets, blurred scans and missing supplementary sheets. Lakhs have applied for verification. In a tweet on 26 May, the CBSE acknowledged receiving 4.04 lakh ‘applications for scanned copies of answer books’. The same tweet claimed to have received ‘11.31 lakh requests for answer books’. The distinction was not clear to this reporter.
For students waiting for re-evaluation, this is no longer a technical glitch. The results are now suspect and at risk are college admissions that are often provisional pending proof that candidates have secured the necessary cut-off marks in their board exams.
Transferring a few worthies and demanding that the education minister resign does not solve the students’ problems nor secure their future. Even now, after its hurriedly introduced on-screen marking (OSM) web domain has been conclusively proven to be hackable, the CBSE’s response is to accept re-evaluation requests — for a fee! It has even managed to come up with a graded fee structure for this re-evaluation. And, believe it or not, will conduct the re-evaluation on the same compromised web domain. If the CBSE has alternative plans, there have been no public announcements to that effect.
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Sarthak Sidhant and 19-year-old Nisarga Adhikary from Siliguri have thoroughly exposed the OSM platform used to evaluate the CBSE Class 12 board papers of 18 lakh students. Sarthak went a step further and exposed how the CBSE tweaked conditions to favour Hyderabad-based Coempt Eduteck over Tata Consultancy Services (TCS).
Quick aside: TCS with 600,000 employees, an annual revenue of $29 billion (Rs 2.40 lakh crore) and 57 years of experience lost out to a company with 51 employees and an average annual turnover of Rs 50 crore.
Sure, size doesn’t bestow credibility but ‘CBSE did not just pick a bad software vendor by accident. They lowered financial baselines. They dropped software security certifications. They cut the corrupt practices cooling-off period by half. They removed the physical server isolation requirement. They erased the word ‘blacklisting’ from their penalty matrix via a last-minute corrigendum, before bidding; and they bypassed their own mandatory CERT-In production audits,’ Sarthak points out in a blog post.
Why did TCS lose the contract? CBSE floated the tender thrice in 2025 — in February, May and August — each time diluting some of the conditions, lowering the bar and making it easier for Coempt Eduteck to bid. On paper, TCS with its vast network, expertise and collaborators abroad, did look qualified to roll out India’s first online evaluation platform. But it became clear that the CBSE was doing everything possible to keep it out. It even decided that the vendor needn’t have its own ‘data centre and disaster recovery centre’, that it would do if the vendor relied on a ‘MeitY-empanelled data and disaster recovery centre’.
There were other tweaks in the OSM tender that Sarthak Sidhant prised open and laid bare. ‘They gambled with our data security, our marks, our mental health; the institution failed us,’ Sarthak writes in his blog.
Nisarga, who had discovered how vulnerable the platform was back in February, three months before the Class 12 board examination began (on 17 May), was equally scathing.
He could have sold the data and made a lot of money, he said. But he didn’t. He could have also kept quiet and used the loopholes to manipulate the marks for whoever was willing to pay. He didn’t. If access to the evaluators’ platform was as easy as Nisarga had demonstrated, what is the guarantee that bad actors did not?
Nisarga, the ethical hacker, promptly informed India’s Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) what he had found and shared what needed to be done to plug the loopholes. CBSE and CERT-In were both casual and callous. Coempt Eduteck, presumably alerted by the CBSE and CERT-In, ignored the warning from the student. What could a Class 12 student possibly do?
The company, the 19-year-old flagged, had ‘not only kept the door to the evaluators’ platform open but kept the key hanging in the lock.’ The password to access the platform was in full public view and he could easily retrieve data and details of schools and examiners, Nisarga said. Anyone could take over any examiner’s account, view answer sheets and edit marks.
Nisarga reported this to CERT-In on 25 February. He was asked for a screen recording and he promptly shared the ‘full walkthrough’, retracing the steps he took to gain access. He received an acknowledgment and a case reference number: CERTIn-16590126. He was assured that CERT-In was in touch with the agencies concerned. However, the loopholes remained till the results were declared on 13 May.
Another examinee, Vedant Srivastava,demanded to see his marked Physics answer sheet, which was emailed to him by the CBSE. Vedant was horrified to find that while the first page of the answer sheet, where roll number, school code etc. had to be filled, was in his own handwriting, the rest of the answer sheet was in somebody else’s handwriting.
After the CBSE stonewalled him, he took to X on 22 May to complain. He was trolled as a ‘Pakistani’, an ‘anti-national’. By a hostile TV anchor, among others.
The same day Nisarga made his blogpost public amplifying how the platform was an invitation to manipulate marks. The CBSE claimed it was a test portal, but quietly deleted its tweet after a friend of Nisarga bought the domain for Rs 99.
On 25 May, Nisarga detected another vulnerability, and again reported it to CERT-In. Four hours later, the CBSE took the whole portal down. On 31 May, he managed to access another CBSE portal with details of 45,074 failed payments for re-evaluation including emails, phone numbers, payment IDs and order IDs. The CBSE doubled down to say there was nothing wrong, that the system was robust.
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There are questions that the CBSE needs to answer. Was it under any pressure to award the contract to the Hyderabad-based company? Why did it fail to heed warnings given by its own governing body members and evaluators? Why were tender conditions tweaked? Who demanded these tweaks and who approved them? Why was Coempt Eduteck picked despite its dubious track record?
Most importantly, how will the CBSE restore faith in the sanctity of these results short of a full re-evaluation of all papers, by means that are considered fair and above board by independent auditors.
Given that these ethical hackers have repeatedly and conclusively demonstrated that the OSM domain is compromised, that it can be hacked and marks altered at will, what is the guarantee that this hasn’t happened? Is the CBSE in a position to vouch that bad actors were not involved to game the results for a price?
‘You study day and night for two full years. You sacrifice sleep, fun, family time, everything, just to score well in your Class 12 boards. You dream of JEE, NEET, a good future. Then the results come... and every-thing is destroyed. This is not a story. This is what lakhs of CBSE students are living right now,’ Tanmay Kashyap, a CBSE Class 12 student from Patna wrote on social media, echoing the sentiment of lakhs of students.
Students and faculty at Columbia’s M.S. in Sustainability Management and Sustainability Science programs turned cutting-edge research on microplastics into Moby Filter, a sustainability startup tackling laundry-induced pollution at its source.
Students and faculty at Columbia’s M.S. in Sustainability Management and Sustainability Science programs turned cutting-edge research on microplastics into Moby Filter, a sustainability startup tackling laundry-induced pollution at its source.
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