A computer enthusiast, Sarthak Siddhant (18), came into the national spotlight after his blog post alleging irregularities in a CBSE tender process drew widespread attention.Speaking to The Tribune, Sarthak, a student of Jawahar Vidya Mandir at Shyamali in Jharkhand who had recently appeared for his Class XII exams, said he expects “transparency and accountability” from the CBSE.He said his interest in the issue began after he connected with Nisarga Adhikary, a 19-year-old cybersecurity researcher who had highlighted vulnerabilities in the board’s On-Screen Marking (OSM) portal.“I was part of a group with Nisarga when he was exposing vulnerabilities in the OSM portal. The first question that came to my mind was why the tender had been awarded to Coempt EduTeck. I started examining CBSE tenders and found several inconsistencies. The rules, terms and clauses were rewritten to favour a specific vendor,” Sarthak alleged.According to him, the CBSE issued three tenders related to the OSM project. The first was later removed from the Government e-Marketplace (GeM) portal. The second, issued on May 2, 2025, was cancelled after four bidders, including TCS and Coempt EduTeck, failed the technical evaluation. In the third tender, both TCS and Coempt EduTeck qualified in the technical evaluation stage, but the contract was eventually awarded to Coempt EduTeck.Sarthak claimed that an earlier Request for Proposal (RfP) stated that a service provider could be disqualified for unsatisfactory work, but the clause was omitted from the subsequent tender. He added a provision disqualifying bidders who had been “blacklisted earlier” was modified to apply only to firms that were “currently blacklisted”.He also pointed to changes in the financial eligibility criteria. “In the May 2025 tender, the financial years considered were FY21, FY22 and FY23, with a turnover requirement of Rs 50 crore, which Coempt failed to meet by a margin of 14.83%. In the August tender, financial years were changed to FY22, FY23 and FY24, allowing Coempt to meet the criterion by a margin of 1.7%,” he said.Sarthak said he has presented his findings before a parliamentary panel. He aspires to become a computer engineer and has appeared for the JEE and COMEDK examinations.Recalling his meeting with Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, Sarthak said, “It was a good meeting. I explained the discrepancies to him.”