Parliamentary panel looking into NEET, OSM issues; seeks answers from NTA, CBSE

A Parliamentary panel has asked the National Testing Agency (NTA) to define what constitutes a “paper leak” in its definition and whether any paper leaks have occurred in exams it conducted since 2018, sources said.The panel’s questionnairefollows NTA officials’ appearance before it last week, where they contended that there was no paper leak from their system, claiming that some questions from a guess paper were in circulation, the sources said.The unfinished promise of transparency in CBSE’s digital evaluation systemThe Parliamentary Standing Committee on Education, Women, Children, Youth and Sports, headed by Congress Rajya Sabha member Digvijaya Singh, is investigating the NEET paper leak and the CBSE’s on-screen marking (OSM) fiasco, and has summoned top government officials, including those from the NTA and CBSE.The committee has sought written answers from the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) and the NTA on the issues of OSM system and the NEET exam respectively.June 8 deadline for CBSEThe panel has asked the NTA whether it conducted any inquiry into the allegations of irregularities in the NEET-UG 2024 (outside of the CBI investigations).The panel has also asked the NTA about its staff strength for the last three years and fresh recruitments made since 2022. It has also demanded the annual report the NTA submitted to the Higher Education Department for the last three years.It has sought a detailed report on each of the Radhakrishnan Committee Report’s 101 recommendations and the action taken by the NTA on each of them, the sources said.The high-level committee of experts, led by former ISRO chief K. Radhakrishnan, was set up in June 2024 by the Centre to give recommendations for transparent, smooth, and fair conduct of examinations through the NTA, including on its structure and functioning, reforms in the examination process, and improvement in data security protocols.While the CBSE must answer the panel’s questions by June 8, the NTA has been asked to submit written answers by June 10. Both agencies are yet to respond, the sources add.‘Weakening’ of RFP provisosThe parliamentary panel has also asked the CBSE about reported “changes” between the various Requests for Proposals (RFPs) issued for the OSM contract and whether any background checks on the company COEMPT were conducted before awarding it the contract, the sources added.The panel has also sought to know from the CBSE whether it was aware that COEMPT EduTeck and/or its directors were previously associated with Globarena Technologies, whose evaluation software was faulted in the inquiry into the 2019 Telangana Intermediate results and how this was factored in the award decision, the sources claimed.Seeking detailed answers from the CBSE, the Parliamentary committee has asked why the proviso disqualifying bidders with a past record of poor performance was removed in the third RFP for the OSM contract, the sources claimed.It has also asked why the proviso prohibiting bidders who were previously blacklisted was “weakened” to exclude only currently blacklisted bidders in the third RFP and why the minimum company turnover for the bidder was specifically set at ₹50 crore, they said.The committee has sought to know why the RFP provisions “changed” from favouring contractors with their own data centres to those using MeitY-empaneled data centres, the sources said.It has asked why the provision for a robotic scanner was “dropped and replaced with a generic provision (’sufficient scanners’)”, and why the stipulation for contractors to scan answer papers without cutting the spine of the paper was removed.Reduction in image quality requirementIt has also sought to know why the minimum scanning resolution desired by the CBSE in its RFP was reduced from 300 DPI (dots per inch, which describes the resolution of an image) to 200 DPI, according to sources.The panel has also asked why the criteria requiring experience in handling large projects (involving at least fi