NEW DELHI: Nisarga Adhikary, the 19-year-old cybersecurity researcher whose disclosures about vulnerabilities in the Central Board of Secondary Education’s (CBSE) On-Screen Marking (OSM) portal drew national attention earlier this year, joined the Cockroach Janta Party’s (CJP) protest at Jantar Mantar on Friday.Nisarga also shared a post on X, where he wrote that he had met CJP leaders Abhijeet Dipke and Anish Gawande.“At the stage @ Jantar Mantar right now. Met @abhijeet_dipke & @anishgawande – the energy here is truly crazy,” he posted.Dipke later reposted Adhikary’s post on X, writing: “It was an honour to meet you legend!”The CJP has been leading protests at Jantar Mantar for over a month, demanding the resignation of Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan over the NEET paper leak issue, compensation for affected families and wider reforms in the examination system.As per news agency PTI, Nisarga Adhikary first came into the spotlight after publicly flagging alleged vulnerabilities in CBSE’s newly-introduced On-Screen Marking (OSM) portal, a platform used for the digital evaluation of board examination answer sheets.According to Nisarga, his interest in the portal stemmed from widespread criticism surrounding the rollout of the OSM system during the board examination season earlier this year.He had said he began examining publicly accessible code loaded through the portal and subsequently identified what he described as multiple security weaknesses.His disclosures became part of a broader public debate over the security and integrity of examination-related digital infrastructure, coming amid heightened scrutiny of the country’s examination system following the NEET paper leak controversy.
