New Delhi, May 31 -- The Central Board of Secondary Education issued its on-screen marking contract to Hyderabad-based Coempt Edu Teck on December 5, 2025-just 74 days before the first Class 12 board examination was held on February 17 -with the firm having emerged as the winner in a quality-and-cost based tender process after submitting the lowest bid, officials said on Friday. The timeline, confirmed to HT, places the contract award at the centre of mounting questions about the pace of the rollout. As HT reported on Friday, CBSE failed to secure a qualified vendor in two earlier tender rounds before several technical conditions were tweaked in an August 2025 RFP. Under the Quality and Cost Based Selection framework- which assigned 70% weightage to technical parameters and 30% to financial bids-Coempt quoted approximately Rs.25.75 per copy inclusive of taxes. Tata Consultancy Services, the only other bidder to meet the technical specifications, quoted around Rs.65 per copy after taxes for certain categories. "TCS' rates were significantly higher at around Rs.65 per copy after taxes for certain categories," an official said, asking not to be named. Officials said both companies held Capability Maturity Model Integration Level 5 certification - the highest tier - at the time of the award. Officials acknowledged that approximately 20 cases of answer-sheet mix-ups had surfaced, but suggested such errors were possible in manual systems as well given the scale of the process - nearly 9.8 million answer books. "For a child whose answer sheet was mixed up, no explanation is enough. But if speed alone determined mistakes, more of such issues could have happened," an official said. Officials defended the selection of Coempt amid allegations by Opposition leaders, including Congress MP Rahul Gandhi, over Coempt's previous work in Telangana....