Daily Briefing: Ignored dry-run warnings at heart of CBSE’s OSM crisis, procurement now under scanner

With that, let’s move on to the top stories from today’s edition:

• CBSE OSM row
• Women’s autonomy in Andhra Pradesh
• The Power Hunter: Gianni Infantino

🚨 Big Story

Warnings ignored: Some problems with the digital evaluation system were explicitly flagged to the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) by participants in a dry run of the evaluation carried out by the Board less than a month before Class 12 examinations began this year. These included glitches within the On-Screen Marking (OSM) system, its heavy reliance on well-equipped evaluation centres and highly trained evaluators, as well as need for at least a year-long trial and rectification before its implementation. The CBSE pushed through the system anyway. Triggered by students’ complaints about their marks after the Board declared the Class 12 results on May 13, a public interest petition was filed in the Delhi High Court seeking an inquiry into the alleged irregularities, technical deficiencies, and grievance-handling failures associated with the OSM system.

The Centre on Tuesday also moved out CBSE Chairman Rahul Singh and Secretary Himanshu Gupta and named their replacements. The government also set up a one-member committee to look into the procurement of services for the OSM system. The developments came on the day official sources confirmed that the issue flagged last month on X by Nisarga Adhikary — a 19-year-old ethical hacker, who had shared a picture indicating he could access the scanned answer sheets — had been verified. The confirmation resulted in the Board acknowledging “vulnerabilities” in the OSM portal.

Whistleblower: Sarthak Sidhant, a 17-year-old student from Jharkhand, impacted by the CBSE’s online marking system, made a presentation before a parliamentary committee on Tuesday on alleged irregularities in the tendering process for vendor selection for online marking in the Class 12 exams. The CBSE has handed over a report to the committee members and assured the MPs that the glitches that appeared on its portal have since been rectified and students now have time till June 6 to apply for re-evaluation of their answer sheets.

⚡ Only in Express

Andhra Pradesh is encouraging couples to have more children to counter falling fertility rates. After announcing Rs 25,000 in 2025 for families that bear a second child, Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu rolled out more incentives this year. “We will provide Rs 30,000 for a third child and Rs 40,000 for a fourth child. Isn’t this the right decision?” The Indian Express travels to Visakhapatnam and finds that the draft Population Management Policy may come up against something fundamental: women’s autonomy. Nowhere is that expressed with better clarity than in Visakhapatnam — at 1.3, the district with one of the lowest TFRs in Andhra Pradesh. And, only a few say it as firmly as Mounika: “I want a government job, so I am trying to clear the Staff Selection Commission exams. I want to take care of my parents; not sacrifice everything for marriage and children…”

📰 From the Front Page

Post-SIR: Upholding the legal validity of the Election Commission’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, the Supreme Court directed that those excluded from the list will face “adjudication of their citizenship”. The Indian Express meets two families, that of Halima and Gudiya, whose cases are pending before tribunals. Both now live in the fear of being asked to prove their citizenship, as well as uncertainty over their continuation in government scheme beneficiary lists.

Aravalli definition row: The Supreme Court has constituted a High-Powered Committee (HPC) to obtain a “fair, impartial and independent” opinion and “resolve critical ambiguities” in the report on the definition of the Aravalli hills. This comes after a series of investigations by The Indian Express in November-December 2025 reported that a SC-appointed committee headed by the Environment Secretary ignored the Forest Survey of India’s (FSI) warning that a 100-metre height threshold would exclude nearly 90 per cent of Aravalli hills, overlooked objections raised by the Central Empowered Committee (CEC), and disregarded the SC’s own rejection of the 100-metre benchmark in 2010.

2022 Port Blair case: Four of the key witnesses in the case against the former Chief Secretary of the Andamans have turned hostile and denied their recorded statements. The development has put the victim,who had filed a police complaint alleging gangrape by Jitendra Narain, in a particularly vulnerable position, with the case against the accused getting weaker. One of the witnesses, the victim’s husband, in March this year, denied that the victim was ever his wife. “Nobody, not even the lawyers, tell me what is going on in court. They don’t want to upset me. So I just wear my uniform every morning and go out for duty,” the victim shares with The Indian Express.

📌 Must Read

Acting President of Venezuela Delcy Rodriguez will arrive in India on Wednesday for a five-day visit from June 3 to 7. The visit assumes significance as it comes five months after Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro was captured by the US forces on January 3, and Rodriguez, formerly Venezuela’s Vice-President, was appointed the country’s Acting President. Rodriguez will hold bilateral discussions with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on matters involving the relations between the two countries, cooperation in “areas of energy, trade, investment, pharmaceuticals, healthcare, transportation and renewable energy,” according to the Ministry of External Affairs.

Opinion: Chinese expansionism in Asia and US volatility have led Tokyo to defend itself and help others secure themselves, writes our columnist C Raja Mohan, as he underlines the lessons, embedded in Japan’s strategic moves, for India. In our Opinion section today, Mohan writes: “The imperatives for Delhi are similar — engage Washington on defence where beneficial, but also simultaneously enhance strategic collaboration with regional powers like Japan, South Korea, Australia, and the ASEAN countries. Plans for India’s bilateral and regional defence collaboration already exist in Delhi. What India needs is an urgent and purposeful transformation of plans into concrete outcomes.”

Market cap slide: The Indian stock market has slipped behind South Korea to the seventh spot in the list of the biggest markets in the world in terms of market capitalisation. This steep decline comes as the Indian markets battle against persistent foreign outflows, lack of artificial intelligence (AI) plays, geopolitical uncertainties and lagging earnings growth. Indian corporates have continued to underinvest in AI-related research and development despite sitting on significant cash reserves, leaving the market behind the AI curve. India’s market cap is at around $4.8 trillion, Bloomberg data shows.

⏳ And Finally…

‘My boy Gianni’: Earlier a functionary and master of ceremonies, Gianni Infantino has now become the most powerful man in world sport. He is close enough to US President Donald Trump to be greeted as “my boy Gianni” in public. He is also close to Vladimir Putin as well as Qatar’s ruling establishment. Strikingly, Infantino’s relationship with Trump feels unusually warm, unusually public and unusually personal. When critics questioned the closeness, Infantino defended it openly, arguing that FIFA needed a strong relationship with the US president to ensure a successful World Cup in North America.

🎧 Lastly, don’t forget to tune in to today’s episode of our 3 Things podcast, where we discuss the year-long investigation by The Indian Express that examined road dust in Delhi and tracked the movement of the city’s Mechanical Road Sweeping Machines (MRSMs), its primary defence against dust pollution. We speak to the reporters who led the investigation, which has revealed serious gaps in coverage and a fleet far smaller than what experts recommend.

That’s all for today. Have a wonderful day!

Until next time,
Ariba

Business As Usual by E P Unny