Vedant Shrivastava (17), Nisarga Adhikary (19) and Sarthak Sidhant (18) were ordinary teenagers until two weeks ago, before they raised their voice on public platforms against the Central Board of Secondary Education’s (CBSE) botched up On-Screen Marking system. After the board admitted to flaws in the system, the Gen Z trio stood vindicated.
Class 12 student Vedant was in for a rude shock when he got called ‘anti-national,’ on X, as he flagged receiving a stranger’s answer sheet instead of his own to the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE).
One of the first students to raise his voice against the On-Screen Marking system deployed by the CBSE, Vedant, who is now being referred to as ‘the primary whistleblower,’ says that since he went public on X, what has ensued is utter ‘chaos.’ The trolling did not stop at being called an ‘anti-national,’ or ‘Pakistani’. “People went on to comment about my physical appearance and my speech,” he says. After pointing out the botch-up, senior officials at the CBSE admitted their mistake and traced his original physics answer sheet.
“I took to X to voice my concerns as CBSE was not replying to my distress calls. Because I am a minor, X does not specifically mention country or location but highlights the larger region to which the account belongs. In my case, this was South Asia, and I was brutally trolled and called a ‘Pakistani,’” Vedant says.
After the CBSE portal for re-evaluation opened on June 2, Vedant applied to get 13 questions re-evaluated in four subjects — Computer Science, English, Mathematics and Physics.
An East Delhi resident, Vedant observes that the CBSE implemented On-Screen Marking in a hasty manner. “In my school, some teachers are very aged and they are used to checking answer copies by hand. They are not well versed with using computers. If the CBSE wants to implement the OSM system in 2027 they should give teachers proper training,” he says.
It has been two weeks since Vedant’s post on X, which blew the lid off a massive evaluation fiasco in the CBSE, but the media attention over the teenager has not died down.
“The controversy started affecting me but my family was very supportive,” he says adding that he got ‘distracted,’ by the CBSE upheaval for the last two weeks but is now re-starting his preparation for the National Defence Academy entrance exams. “I aspire to be a fighter pilot with the Indian Air Force.”
Nisarga Adhikary, a West Bengal-based “ethical hacker”, exposed “critical vulnerabilities” in the CBSE’s OSM portal, including leaking sensitive student information.
The CBSE immediately slipped into denial after Nisarga went public with his posts on X, and nearly after two weeks, it admitted to the flaws. “It was really frustrating for me that the CBSE and the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) took three months (since he first raised complaints in February) to admit the flaws in their portal,” Nisarga told The Hindu. Between 2023 and 2025, Nisarga found himself embroiled in the Joint Entrance Exams (JEE) race, which he said was ‘pretty depressing.’ “I don’t see a point in putting effort for an institute (Indian Institutes of Technology) when they are not even in top 100 ranking institutes across the world,” he told The Hindu. Life came full circle for Nisarga when an expert IIT team invited him to fix the vulnerabilities in the CBSE’s IT ecosystem. Asked why the students have been forced to take matters into their own hands, Nisarga says: “Gen Z holding people accountable is the way to go as some people in high places are full of ego.”
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At age 19, when most students are busy with regular schooling, Nisarga had already started interning in tech companies. He primarily identifies as a software engineer and has worked on digitising restaurant menus for a Mumbai-based tech company Skann before dabbling into an internship with Singapore-based crypto giant Cypherock and then interning with Bengaluru-based tech company Wavelength. Hacking into CBSE portals was his first brush with social activism, he says.
Nisarga says he has multiple job offers from Silicon Valley in California, and he does not want to ‘waste his time going to college’. “In case I take up an offer in the U.S., I will aim to apply for an extraordinary talent visa [U.S. O-1 nonimmigrant visa], which allows individuals who have reached the top of their fields to live and work in the U.S.,” he says. “However, I will stay back in India if I get a good research opportunity to work in IITs.”
Nisarga believes in combining computer programming with activism to champion public rights causes around data privacy. The teen ‘ethical hacker’ has also publicly stated that he is ‘queer,’ and is concerned about the LGBTQ rights in India.
“I want to build an inclusive society where people are more accepting of each other. Religion is a coping mechanism whereas we need more scientific thought over religion to build an inclusive society,” he says.
Ranchi-based Sarthak Sidhant is being chased by journalists since he alleged through comparison of public documents that the CBSE had diluted requirements to favour technology vendor COEMPT Eduteck in the OSM portal issue. Sarthak became what is likely the youngest person to depose in front of a Parliamentary Panel. After his deposition on June 2, he has not been able to return home, because he says he feels ‘unsafe’. He felt compelled to shift to an undisclosed location after journalists reached his accommodation in New Delhi. “In Ranchi, I gather there are journalists waiting for me outside my house. I don’t want to go back home, so I am staying put at an undisclosed location,” he says.
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Sarthak says he is of a curious nature and he likes spending most of his time on his computer “digging into new things”. “I do not like watching movies or web shows. What I like, however, is old songs with meaningful lyrics playing in the background while I work on my computer.” Sarthak is a fan of progressive Indian poet Sahir Ludhianvi and when asked what his favourite works are, without hesitation, he immediately cites lyrics — Tu Hindu banega na Musalaman banegaa, Insaan ki aulad hai, Insaan banega (You will neither be a Hindu or Muslim, you are humanity’s child you will be a human).
Sarthak says his parents had an intercaste marriage and they have an evolutionary and pragmatic perspective, which sowed seeds of rationality and logic in him since a young age. “After my father passed away due to cardiac arrest two years ago, I started questioning concepts like religion, philosophy and faith.”
Sarthak wants to pursue engineering and go on to blend technology with social welfare for bettering lives. He looks up to Dinkar’s poetry and cites the poet’s famous work: ‘Lohe ke ped hare honge,’ (Dried out trees will become green). “The sole message of this poetry is that one should keep asking questions and put in constant efforts to seek answers,” he says.
Published - June 07, 2026 01:15 am IST
India / education / test/examination / government
Source: The Hindu - India News
