Mangalore adopts OSM evaluation for Class 12 exams amid procedural concerns

In the coastal city of Mangalore, the Board of Secondary Education, acting under the aegis of the Central Board of Secondary Education, has proclaimed that the Online Scanning and Marking (OSM) system, originally trialed on a modest scale in the year of our Lord two thousand and fifteen, shall this annum be employed for the comprehensive assessment of all Class Twelve answer scripts. The municipal authorities, whose jurisdiction traditionally encompasses the provision of civic amenities rather than the intricacies of pedagogic evaluation, have nevertheless issued a press communiqué extolling the purported efficiency of the digital methodology while offering scant evidence of public consultation or independent audit.

Critics among the scholarly community and concerned parents alike have decried the rapid escalation from a narrowly confined pilot program to a city‑wide mandate, contending that the absence of transparent criteria for algorithmic marking engenders a palpable risk of systematic bias against vulnerable learners. Moreover, the municipal education department, whose budgetary allocations have been increasingly directed toward technocratic ventures, appears to have neglected the longstanding requirement for mechanical inspection of answer scripts by qualified human examiners, thereby supplanting seasoned pedagogues with an untested software conduit.

The resultant disquiet has been amplified by reports that several schools, situated in densely populated wards of the city, experienced prolonged power outages during the scheduled scanning windows, compelling staff to resort to manual transcription against the very premise of the digital transition. In response, the municipal grievance redressal cell issued a generic statement asserting that technical contingencies would be remedied in forthcoming iterations, yet failed to delineate any concrete timetable, accountability framework, or recourse for aggrieved pupils and their families.

The lingering ambiguity concerning the statutory legitimacy of algorithmic marking under the Indian Education Act of 2009 engenders a troubling inference that the municipal authority may have transgressed its legislated powers by unilaterally instituting a digital evaluation framework without parliamentary endorsement. Equally disconcerting is the conspicuous absence of a formally documented data‑privacy impact assessment, a procedural safeguard envisaged by the State Information Regulation, which ordinarily obliges custodians of student records to evaluate and mitigate risks of unauthorized disclosure before deploying any cloud‑based assessment system. Compounding the procedural deficits, the municipal budgetary ledger discloses a sizable tranche devoted to proprietary software licensing yet furnishes no public audit trail, cost‑benefit justification, or compliance certification, thereby contravening the transparency obligations embedded within the city’s charter of fiscal responsibility. Thus, the community must now contemplate whether municipal officials possessed adequate expertise to sanction such a sweeping digital overhaul, whether oversight committees were duly apprised and empowered to intervene, whether the allocation of public funds adhered to prudential legal standards, and whether the existing grievance mechanisms offer genuine redress or merely a perfunctory façade.

The present episode further illuminates a systemic proclivity within municipal governance to prioritize technologically fashionable initiatives over entrenched procedural rigour, thereby engendering a climate wherein administrative expediency eclipses the foundational tenets of accountability and citizen participation. Such an orientation, when manifested in the abrupt deployment of a wholesale digital marking apparatus, invariably circumvents the deliberative planning processes that customarily demand stakeholder consultation, impact forecasting, and phased implementation to safeguard against inadvertent disruption of educational continuity. Consequently, the allocation of public resources toward an unproven software suite, without demonstrable cost‑effectiveness or transparent procurement procedures, risks contravening statutory obligations stipulated in the Municipal Finance Act, thereby jeopardising the fiscal stewardship owed to the taxpaying populace. In this context, one must query whether the municipal legal counsel authorized the procurement in strict conformity with e‑procurement statutes, whether the tendering process satisfied the competitive fairness criteria demanded by law, whether ordinary residents retain a substantive avenue to contest such executive actions, and whether the city's oversight commissions are equipped with the requisite investigative authority to enforce compliance and remediate systemic lapses.

Published: May 15, 2026

Published: May 15, 2026