A day after the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Education, Women, Children, Youth and Sports summoned the top brass of the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) and the Education Ministry to discuss issues surrounding on-screen marking (OSM), the panel’s head and Congress leader Digvijaya Singh questioned the Board’s decision to shift from robotic scanners to ordinary scanners.“Initially, for OSM, the CBSE had decided to use robotic scanners in the RFP (request for proposal) document. But later it was changed to an ordinary scanner. Why? Only Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan would know,” Singh said.Explaining the technology, Singh said a robotic scanner combined a 3D or optical scanner with an automated robotic arm (or similar automated mechanism) to capture detailed, hands-free measurements. “These systems are widely used in manufacturing for automated quality control, in libraries for bulk archival digitising, and in reverse engineering,” he said.He questioned the reason behind the change. “To oblige a particular vendor? Decide yourself,” the Congress leader remarked.“Scanning should be done without cutting the spine of the answer booklet by employing automatic book/robotic scanners. All the pages of the booklet should be accounted for and identified with the booklet ID number,” the RFP issued by CBSE in May 2025 had stated.In the revised RFP, however, the requirement was changed to “sufficient scanner”. Moreover, the scanning resolution was reduced from 300 dpi to 200 dpi. Higher resolution generally results in better image clarity and legibility.The issue was first highlighted by 17-year-old Sarthak Sidhant, who made a presentation before the parliamentary panel on June 2.“The quality of scanning the answer books was compromised. The vendor can use whatever quality of scanner is available to them. It could even be a phone tied to a stand,” Sarthak wrote in his blog.