Sea_Splash

Arsenal fan. Finding my space in the world. Will laugh with you. And at you. Love short sentences. On Twitter.

[Sir Jenkinson @theEpicGooner]

Finals aren’t about entertainment. They’re about winning.

[Malay Krishna @Malay4Product]

This is an unbelievable piece of work by Sarthak and something that requires amplification.

Let me explain what he found, in simple terms.

Sarthak is a Class 12 student from the 2025-26 batch, one of the 17 lakh students whose answer sheets went through CBSE's new On-Screen Marking system.

He spent days reading through CBSE's evaluation tenders, scraped all 576 tenders CBSE has issued, and tracked how the rules changed across three versions of the same tender.

The core finding is that the company that won the contract to scan and grade 17 lakh students' answer sheets is Coempt Eduteck.

Coempt used to be called Globarena Technologies. Globarena was the company behind the 2019 Telangana intermediate exam disaster, where software failures led to 3.8 lakh students getting wrong or missing marks, and 23 students died by suicide.

A government committee found systemic failure and negligence. Six months later, Globarena rebranded to Coempt Eduteck.

So a company with that track record won a contract to handle 17 lakh CBSE students. Sarthak's investigation is about how the rules were rewritten to let that happen.

The tender was issued three times.

> First tender, February 2025. It existed, then disappeared from the public GeM portal. Sarthak scraped all 576 CBSE tenders and this one was missing from the archive entirely.

> Second tender, May 2025. Four companies applied including TCS and Coempt. All four failed the technical evaluation. Cancelled.

> Third tender, August 2025. Coempt won. Between the second and third tender, a series of rule changes happened, and every single one made it easier for Coempt to qualify.

Here is what changed, one by one.

01. The old rules disqualified any company with a history of abandoning work, failing to complete contracts, or financial weakness. The new rules deleted this clause entirely. Coempt's Telangana history stopped being a barrier.

02. The old rules disqualified any company that was "blacklisted earlier." The new rules changed this to "currently blacklisted." Because Globarena rebranded after Telangana, removing the word "earlier" effectively erased their past.

03. The rules required Rs 50 crore average turnover over three years. Coempt's exact average came to Rs 50.86 crore. They cleared the bar by less than 1%. Earlier, a smaller company had asked CBSE to lower the bar to Rs 30 crore for fairer competition. CBSE refused. So the bar was kept high enough to block small players, but sat exactly low enough for Coempt to scrape through.

04. Software maturity is measured on the CMMI scale, 1 to 5. The old rules required Level 5. The new rules dropped it to Level 3. Coempt is a Level 3 company.

05. The cooling-off period for engaging retired CBSE officials was cut from two years to one. This makes it easier to use recently retired insiders to influence the process.

06. The old rules required experience with large projects of at least 5 lakh students each. The new rules removed the student count and counted cumulative answer-book volume across small projects instead. Coempt has many small fragmented university contracts. This helped Coempt and hurt TCS.

07. The old rules required bidders to own their own data centre and disaster recovery centre on Indian soil. The new rules allowed third-party MeitY-empanelled cloud hosting. Coempt runs on AWS and Azure. This helped Coempt and hurt TCS, which owns its own data centres. It also means student data is no longer on sovereign, Indian infrastructure.

08. The old rules required the bidder to own or control the complete source code of its software. The new rules deleted this. Coempt's platform runs on Microsoft's proprietary IIS, which they don't own.

09. A last-minute corrigendum, issued right before bid submission, removed CBSE's own power to blacklist the firm if its software failed catastrophically. So even a Telangana-scale failure couldn't get Coempt banned from future government tenders.

10. The penalty structure shifted from punishing mistakes to punishing delays. The old rules fined the vendor for wrong scanning, merged pages, and unscanned books. The new rules dropped those and instead levied Rs 50,000 per day for delays. This incentivises rushed scanning over accurate scanning.

11. The old rules had a hard accuracy threshold, error rate not to exceed 0.5%. The new rules removed this number entirely.

12. The old rules specified proper book and robotics scanners. The new rules just say "sufficient scanners." The definition was vague enough that, as Sarthak notes, the scanning could be done with a phone on a stand.

13. On the security side, the contract required a VAPT (vulnerability and penetration test) certified by CERT-In before go-live, and a restricted beta phase before launch. The system clearly wasn't restricted, because the other researcher, Nisarga, was able to access it and find vulnerabilities four days before go-live. So the mandatory security audit appears to have been bypassed.

These are more than a dozen rule changes, all between the failed tender and the winning tender, all pushing in the same direction, all benefiting the one company with the worst track record in the field.

The security holes Nisarga found last week now have an explanation. The system was built by a vendor that was specifically allowed to skip the security certification, the source code ownership, the data sovereignty, and the quality thresholds the original rules demanded.

Following things need to happen immediately;

1. An immediate CAG audit of the tender process.
2. A parliamentary debate on the topic.
3. An independent investigation into
> Why the first tender vanished?
> Why the disqualification clauses were deleted?
> Why the turnover bar was held exactly where it was?
> Why the security level was dropped?
> Why the blacklisting power was removed at the last moment?

Sarthak, this is genuinely exceptional investigative work. Far better than most journalists with full resources ever manage. Take a bow. :)

[After Review @YonkoAbbz]

This commentator is class 😂

[Arsenal @Arsenal]

This time last night 😍

[arnie୧ 🥇 @arnie1886]

Literally me every hour

[Fong @NotEvenWounded]

Me every 12 seconds

[PD @1_2spaces]

It took me a little while to find this comp, it's an absolute beauty. It'll make you feel all kinds of shit

[talkSPORT @talkSPORT]

🔥"Arsenal fans are absolutely losing it!"

@maxbscott captured the live scenes in North London as Arsenal fans celebrate winning the Premier League fir the first time in 22 years!

[Guinness World Records @GWR]

Congratulations to Max Dowman, who has become the youngest person to win the Premier League 🏆

[B/R Football @brfootball]

22 years since the Invincibles.

Arsenal are Champions again ❤️

[Eduardo Hagn @EduardoHagn]

🚨 THE ARSENAL PLAYERS CELEBRATING THE TITLE AT SOBHA! 🤩🔴⚪️

🎥 @Asxdk_98

[Arsenal @Arsenal]

This belongs to all of us.

[Ritu Tawde @TawdeRitu]

दि. १५ मे २०२६

मुलुंडच्या कालिदास क्रीडा संकुलातील भ्रष्टाचारावर प्रहार! 🚩

आज मुलुंड येथील कालिदास क्रीडा संकुलाला भेट देऊन तेथील परिस्थितीची प्रत्यक्ष पाहणी केली. यावेळी माजी खासदार मा. श्री. किरीट सोमय्या जी यांनी उघडकीस आणलेला कोट्यवधींचा भ्रष्टाचार आणि अनियमितता पाहून धक्का बसला.

सामान्य जनतेच्या हक्काच्या जागेवर, तत्कालीन महापौर किशोरी पेडणेकर यांच्या कार्यकाळात पालिकेचा ठराव डावलून 'मेघराज हॉस्पिटॅलिटी' सारख्या संस्थांना नियमबाह्य १५ वर्षांचे कंत्राट देण्यात आले. संकुलातील मोकळ्या जागा, स्विमिंग पूलचा परिसर आणि हॉल बळकावून तिथे अनधिकृत बांधकामे करण्यात आली आहेत.

या गंभीर गैरप्रकाराची दखल घेत मी संबंधित अधिकाऱ्यांना खालीलप्रमाणे कडक आदेश दिले आहेत:
✅ सर्व अनधिकृत बांधकामांवर त्वरित तोडक कारवाई करावी.
✅ भ्रष्टाचार करणाऱ्या आणि त्याला पाठीशी घालणाऱ्या अधिकाऱ्यांवर FIR दाखल करावा.
✅ दोषी अधिकाऱ्यांच्या निलंबनाची प्रक्रिया तात्काळ सुरू करावी.

सामान्य मुंबईकरांच्या मालमत्तेवर डल्ला मारणाऱ्यांची गय केली जाणार नाही. पारदर्शक कारभार आणि जनतेला न्याय मिळवून देणे हीच आमची प्राथमिकता आहे.

या पाहणी दौऱ्यावेळी माजी खासदार मा. श्री. किरीट सोमय्या जी, आमदार मा. श्री. मिहीर कोटेचा जी, माजी खासदार मा. श्री. मनोज कोटक जी, प्रभाग समिती अध्यक्षा श्रीमती साक्षी दळवी जी, नगरसेविका दीपिका घाग, नगरसेविका श्रीमती हेतल गाला मोरवेकर, नगरसेवक श्री. प्रकाश गंगाधरे, उपायुक्त (उद्याने) अजितकुमार आंबी, सहाय्यक आयुक्त समरीन सय्यद आणि महापालिकेचे इतर संबंधित अधिकारी उपस्थित होते.

मुलुंडच्या सांस्कृतिक आणि क्रीडा वारशाचे जतन करण्यासाठी आम्ही सर्व लोकप्रतिनिधी प्रशासनाच्या माध्यमातून कठोर पावले उचलत आहोत.

#KalidasSportsComplex #IllegalConstruction #ActionAgainstCorruption #MumbaiForPeople #Mulund #MumbaiMayor #RituTawde #mumbaichiprathamsevika #BMC

@BJP4Mumbai @Dev_Fadnavis @RaviDadaChavan @ShelarAshish @MPLodha @AmeetSatam @KiritSomaiya @mihirkotecha @manoj_kotak @SakshiDalvi112 @ghagdeepika101 @MorvekarHetal @GangadhareBJP @mybmc

[Natwar K Gangani @natu_gangani]

The kalidas swimming pool is for renovation from last 2 years . People staying in mulund are facing lot of problem from last 2 years . Contracter is delaying the work i request you to look into the matter .

[『葬送のフリーレン』アニメ公式 @Anime_Frieren]

只今より…
『葬送のフリーレン』第2期
オリジナルサウンドトラック配信開始🪄
▶https://t.co/6FtOVRclDo

#EvanCall による
#フリーレン の世界に浸れる楽曲を
何度でもお楽しみください🪄

そしてCDも本日発売！💿
▶https://t.co/QfvyF8Pymc

#frieren

[Sea_Splash @port_side]

@Toyota_India Is there a planned car price increase for the Toyota Glanza in Mumbai? The dealer has been saying there is an increase scheduled from 6th April.

[G.O.T Games @GOTGAMES_TB]

OK..... WHAT THE F*** IS THIS OVER-HYPED ANIME FRIEREN EVERYONE KEEPS TALKING ABOUT?!!!! 😡😡

Sure, it's utterly stunning, you can have an entire episode of 3 characters walking around a village talking about some kind of weird fruit that makes you smell slightly odd and it can feel like the greatest episode of anime you've ever seen.

You can have a 10 second fight and it's more visually stunning than some 20 minute ones. 🎨

You can even have characters just standing around looking at scenery and it brings a tear to your eye, showing some of the greatest illustrations and animations I've seen 😢

I mean I get all that, but other than that, what's the hype? People are weird 🤔

Mid... 10/10... Perfect 💯

So, Denken about to go John wick on a demon for season 3? See you all in October 2027 🫡🫡

Frieren Season 2 Episode 10, must like the rest of this season was completely flawless. Unbelievably sad it's over already 😭
#Frieren #FrierenBeyondJourneysEnd #FrierenSeason2 #Anime

[Sea_Splash @port_side]

@billycarpy What solutions can Arteta explore to get us scoring freely again without dipping into the transfer market? If we sacrifice defensive solidity, how can we guarantee attacking output?

[Sea_Splash @port_side]

@IRCTCofficial I have done that. The screenshot is of the response from the equery portal.

[Sea_Splash @port_side]

@IRCTCofficial My irctc account has been deactivated for 'Other Miscellaneous Reasons'. And the recommended action is to use a new mobile number to create a new account. I dont have another mobile number. Please resolve this so i can use my mobile number / email id.

[Sea_Splash @port_side]

The solution cannot be to purchase a new mobile number and then keep it active so i can book tickets. Please help resolve this.