Sarthak Sidhant, a 17-year-old student who exposed the alleged irregularities in the Central Board of Secondary Education’s (CBSE) on-screen marking (OSM) system tendering process, appeared before the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Education, Women, Children, Youth and Sports on Tuesday.Sidhant, one of the students affected by the CBSE’s online marking system, made a presentation before the parliamentary panel. “My thesis is that rules, terms, conditions and clauses were rewritten to favour a specific vendor–Coempt Edu Teck. This was done at the expense of national data security and the future of students,” he wrote in a blog.He also explained that in the old request for proposal (RfP), the CBSE had explicitly stated that a service provider would be instantly disqualified if a confidential inquiry or past record revealed a history of “abandoning work, not properly completing contractual obligations, or financial failures or weaknesses in any institution”. However, in the new RfP, these clauses were removed.Ousted CBSE Chairman Rahul Singh and Secretary (School Education) Sanjay Kumar too have put their version before the parliamentary panel. “We too are worried about the mental health of students. The verification and revaluation portal is now live and students can apply for revaluation till June 6,” an official with the Education Ministry said.Questions were also asked from the CBSE about the three-language policy. The official said the matter was sub-judice.Congress MP Digvijaya Singh, who heads the panel, said, “The committee is concerned and we will consider whatever can be done in the interests of the students.”Officials from the CBSE said it would penalise its Hyderabad-based OSM service provider Coempt Edu Teck for issues with online marking of Class XII answers.Meanwhile, the CBSE said “malicious actors” attempted to disrupt services on its re-evaluation portal through a barrage of cyberattacks, including a denial-of-service attack, which caused 15 lakh hits on the platform within two minutes and more than one lakh attempts at unauthorised file access. “As of 3 pm today, more than 16,000 students successfully completed their submissions…. Based on student feedback, we have further refined the platform, including extending session time limits to make the process more convenient and seamless,” the CBSE said.