'Sitting inside CBSE': Rahul Gandhi's 'beware of pickpockets' warning amid OSM row; flags re-evaluation fees

NEW DELHI: Lok Sabha leader of opposition Rahul Gandhi Monday targeted the CBSE for charging students a range of fees for re-evaluation, even when discrepancies stem from the board's own errors.Targeting the entire process of charging the students, the Congress leader said: "When education is turned from a service into a business, mistakes aren't corrected. They're multiplied. And our children are paying the steepest price for it.""Beware of pickpockets - today they're sitting inside CBSE. If marks come out wrong due to CBSE's mistake, what do you get? A bill: Digital scan copy: Rs 100/subjec, Re-totalling: Rs 100/paper, Re-evaluation: Rs 25/question. A child might have to shell out up to Rs 2000 just to get their own answer sheet properly checked," he wrote on X. He futher wrote: "Think about it: when 4 lakh kids have filed such applications, how much is CBSE raking in. When scanning was done with a phone, wrong marking is a given. And the child is footing the bill to get it fixed. The mistake is CBSE's. The punishment is the child's. The earnings are the government's. When education is turned from a service into a business, mistakes aren't corrected. They're multiplied. And our children are paying the steepest price for it - with their time, their self-confidence, and their future."Gandhi on Sunday stepped up his attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the CBSE OSM controversy, accusing him of ignoring the concerns of 18.5 lakh students allegedly affected by irregularities in the board's answer-sheet scanning process.In a post on X, he said the Prime Minister found time to speak on a range of issues during his monthly Mann Ki Baat address, but not about students whose answer sheets were allegedly not assessed properly."This morning, the Prime Minister had time to speak about mangoes. He has not had time to speak about 18.5 lakh children whose answer sheets were scanned with phones. Dharmendra Pradhan ji still sits in office. Modi ji's silence is no longer indifference. It is complicity," Gandhi wrote.Sharpening his criticism of the government, Gandhi also shared a video of his interaction with a group of students and praised them for raising questions about the controversy."Vedant and his friends are brilliant, brave young Indians who asked CBSE and the Modi govt simple questions - but got insults instead of answers," he said.The row began after Vedant, a Class 12 student, claimed in a post on X that the Physics answer sheet uploaded by the CBSE under its copy-scanning process did not belong to him. The allegation quickly gained traction online, with several other students making similar claims on social media.Meanwhile, Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh alleged that CBSE Class 12 answer sheets had been exposed in the public domain, describing it as a serious breach of student privacy.Claiming that the data of millions of students could be at risk, Ramesh said, "this is a data breach of monumental proportions and it compromises the privacy of 2 million students."