New Delhi, May 18 -- Defending its newly introduced on-screen marking (OSM) system amid criticism over a sharp fall in Class 12 results, officials in the Central Board of Secondary Education and Union ministry of education on Sunday said the technology-driven evaluation process ensured transparent and objective assessment, even as experts and teachers pointed to broader structural shifts in assessment patterns, post-pandemic normalisation of scores, and changing student priorities amid the rise of entrance examinations such as the Common University Entrance Test as factors behind the board's lowest pass percentage in seven years. The board's overall Class 12 results fell 3.19 percentage points to 85.20%, down from 88.39% last year, marking the lowest since 2019, when the pass percentage stood at 83.40%. The decline came in the first year of CBSE's full-fledged OSM system for evaluating Class 12 answer sheets. Under OSM, answer scripts were scanned and uploaded to a secure digital portal where teachers assessed them on computer screens, entered marks digitally and annotated responses online, while totals were auto-calculated to eliminate human error. CBSE evaluated 9,866,622 answer books digitally, while 13,583 copies were checked manually because repeated scanning failed to produce legible images. Addressing a press conference on Sunday, secretary, department of school education and literacy (DoSEL), Sanjay Kumar said variations in Class 12 results had existed since 2019 and Covid-era relaxations had temporarily inflated pass percentages. "The system is now stabilising and the marking process has become far more objective," Kumar said, adding that the evaluation process itself had not changed except that answer scripts were now assessed on digital screens instead of physically. CBSE chairperson Rahul Singh said nearly 300,000 teachers logged into the CBSE portal for training, while 77,000 teachers participated in evaluation. "Only teachers evaluated each copy in the OSM and no AI was used in the evaluation of answer scripts." Singh added that CBSE conducted a dry run on January 20-21 across five schools involving 100 teachers before rolling out demonstrations, webinars and practice sessions on previous years' answer scripts ahead of the March 7 evaluation process....