Then there is the matter of a re-evaluation process that is falling apart at a time when students are in a hurry to get their applications and entrance tests in order. Since the board’s nationwide foray into On-Screen Marking, the pass rate has taken a hit, down to 85.20% from 88.39% a year ago. The very mechanism meant to set things right has been anything but smooth.
Universities and the people on scholarship panels who need to put their trust in a score feel the impact right away. When a student’s marks don’t add up to what they were hoping for, it’s a drain on time and morale. Meanwhile, the institutions are left in limbo, waiting to see if a recheck will shift the merit list or the cut-offs.
What changed and why it matters
In its first go-round of On-Screen Marking across the country, CBSE put an end to physical scripts in favour of scanned ones. They put forward a case for being open, fast and precise. The reality was a bit different: more than 68,000 answer books needed to be re-scanned because of the quality, and 13,500 or so had to be put in for a manual look-see.
You could have heard from teachers back in February 2026 that the evaluators weren’t properly trained for this. CBSE went ahead anyway. There has been no word from the board on how they vouched for the quality of an evaluation when some of the source material was faulty, which has only put parents and students on edge.
Blurry scans, missed answers
Go through the screenshots from students who have seen their copies and you will find a lot of indistinct text, pages you can’t make out, and odd rotations. A few even have browser bars and timestamps in the way. Evaluators have put in for screen fatigue and low resolution during OSM, and it makes you wonder about the fairness of it all.
If you are a candidate with RENEET and CUET UG on your plate, a non-working portal is time you can’t get back. It is a fact of life: your board results open or close doors for scholarships and admissions, and any delay has a way of spilling over into the rest of your exam schedule.
A re-evaluation process that stumbled
We opened the application portal on May 19th and it was down in no time. CBSE had to take the link down and put it back up the next day, after 1.27 lakh applications came in for 3.87 lakh of the scanned work. Some had money taken out of their accounts with no proof of it, and for a day or more, there was no answer.
It didn’t stop there. Between not being able to log in, errors in submission and trouble with downloads, it was a mess. The portal was put in maintenance mode by the 21st. After two deadline extensions, the board put May 24th as the hard line on the 22nd, then moved it to the 25th (midnight).
To make amends for the whole thing, CBSE has trimmed re-evaluation fees by as much as 85%. You can get a scanned copy for 100 per subject now, where it was 600 in FY2024-25. They have put out a promise to put back any over-deductions and to give you a full refund should your marks go up.
Here is a run-down of what CBSE has done to put it right:
– Portal was back up on May 20th
– Gave us until May 24th to apply
– Then again to May 25th (midnight)
– Dropped the fee to 100 a subject
– Pledged to refund where due
Money, volume and trust
Take last year: some 50,000 from both Class 10 and 12 wanted in on their answer sheets, and the re-checking fees brought in well over 20 crore. This time around, 1.27 lakh requests from Class 12 is a sign of how much the board is being put to the test.
An 85.20% pass rate is more than a number. For the state and central colleges, it muddies the waters for their benchmarks; for the student, it can be the difference between getting in and being turned away, unless the re-evaluation comes through and holds water.
What students and schools need next
Some in the know say you can’t just modernise without doing your homework first. They are calling for a proper audit, some answers on the scanning side, and to be told in plain terms how quality was kept when the scans were unworkable.
There is nothing wrong with going digital. It is the way it is done. What a student wants is not a blurred script or a maintenance page. They want to be able to count on the re-evaluation, have their side of the story heard, and a process that is above board for their future’s sake.
