Vedant Shrivastava, Nisarga Adhikary and Sarthak Siddhant Gen Z Trio to take on CBSE

Vedant Shrivastava (17), Nisarga Adhikary (19) and Sarthak Sidhant (18) were ordinary teenagers two weeks ago when they raised their voice on public platforms against the Central Board of Secondary Education’s (CBSE) botched on-screen marking system. After the board admitted flaws in the system, the Gen Z trio were vindicated.

Class 12 student Vedant was in for a rude shock when he was branded ‘anti-national’ on X when he reported getting a foreigner’s answer sheet instead of his own to the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE).

One of the first students to raise his voice against the on-screen marking system deployed by the CBSE, Vedant, now referred to as a “primary informant”, says there has been complete “chaos” ever since X went public. The trolling didn’t stop at being called “anti-national” or “Pakistani”. “People kept making comments about my physical appearance and my speech,” she says. After pointing out the botched issue, senior CBSE officials admitted their mistake and tracked down his original physics answer sheet.

“I came to X to express my concerns as CBSE did not respond to my emergency calls. As I am a minor, X does not specifically mention the country or location but highlights the larger region the account belongs to. In my case it was South Asia and I was brutally trolled and called a ‘Pakistani’,” says Vedant.

After the CBSE revaluation portal was opened on June 2, Vedant asked for revaluation of 13 questions in four subjects – Computer Science, English, Mathematics and Physics.

Vedant, a resident of East Delhi, notes that CBSE has implemented on-screen marking in a hasty manner. “In my school, some teachers are very old and are used to checking answer copies manually. They are not well versed in using computers. If CBSE wants to implement OSM in 2027, they should train the teachers properly,” he says.

It’s been two weeks since Vedant’s post on X blew the lid off the massive CBSE assessment fiasco, but media attention on the teenager has not died down.

“The controversy started affecting me, but my family was very supportive,” he says, adding that he was “distracted” by the CBSE upheaval in the past two weeks, but is now resuming his preparations for the National Defense Academy entrance exams. “I want to be a fighter pilot in the Indian Air Force.

‘Ethical Hacker’

Nisarga Adhikary, an “ethical hacker” based in West Bengal, exposed “critical vulnerabilities” in CBSE’s OSM portal, including the leak of sensitive student information.

The CBSE immediately slipped into denial after Nisarga posted his posts on X, admitting the mistake almost two weeks later. “It was really frustrating for me that it took CBSE and the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) three months (since he first raised the complaint in February) to acknowledge the flaws in their portal,” Nisarga told The Hindu. Between 2023 and 2025, Nisarga became embroiled in the JEE (Joint Entrance Exams) race, which he said was “quite depressing”. “I don’t see the point of putting effort into an institute (Indian Institutes of Technology) when they are not even in the top 100 ranked institutes globally,” he told The Hindu. Life came full circle for Nisarg when an IIT expert team invited him to fix vulnerabilities in CBSE’s IT ecosystem. Asked why students were forced to take matters into their own hands, Nisarga says, “Gen Z holding people accountable is the way to go because some people in high places are full of ego.”

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At the age of 19, when most students are busy with regular schooling, Nisarga has already started interning at tech companies. Primarily identifying as a software engineer, he worked on digitizing menus for Mumbai-based technology company Skann before interning at Singaporean crypto giant Cypherock and then at Bengaluru-based technology company Wavelength. Hacking CBSE portals was his first brush with social activism, he says.

Nisarga says he has several job offers from Silicon Valley, California, and doesn’t want to “waste time going to college.” “In the event that I accept an offer in the US, I will seek to apply for an extraordinary talent visa (US O-1 non-immigrant visa), which will allow individuals who have reached the top of their fields to live and work in the US,” he says. “However, I will stay in India if I get a good research opportunity to work in an IIT.

Nisarga believes in combining computer programming with activism to advance public privacy rights. The teenage “ethical hacker” has also publicly stated that he is “queer” and concerned about LGBTQ rights in India.

“I want to build an inclusive society where people are more accepting of each other. Religion is a coping mechanism, whereas to build an inclusive society we need more scientific thinking about religion,” he says.

Ranchi-based Sarthak Sidhant is being hounded by journalists for alleging through a collation of public documents that CBSE watered down claims to favor COEMPT technology vendor Eduteck in the OSM portal issue. Sarthak became probably the youngest person to depose before a parliamentary panel. He has not been able to return home after being fired on June 2 because he says he does not feel “safe.” When reporters reached his accommodation in Delhi, he felt compelled to shift to an undisclosed location. “I found journalists waiting outside my house in Ranchi. I don’t want to go home, so I’m staying at an unknown place,” he says.

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The seeds of rationality

Sarthak says he’s curious and likes to spend most of his time at the computer “fiddling with new things.” “I don’t like watching movies or web shows. What I do like, though, are old songs with meaningful lyrics that play in the background while I’m working on the computer.” Sarthak is a fan of progressive Indian poet Sahir Ludhianvi and when asked what his favorite works are, he immediately quotes the lyrics without hesitation — Tu Hindu banega na Musalaman banegaa, Insaan ki aulad hai, Insaan banega (You will be neither Hindu nor Muslim, you are a child of humanity, you will be human).

Sarthak says his parents had an inter-caste marriage and have an evolutionary and pragmatic perspective that planted the seeds of rationality and logic in him from an early age. “After my father died of cardiac arrest two years ago, I began to question concepts like religion, philosophy and faith.”

Sarthak wants to pursue engineering and continue to blend technology with social welfare to improve lives. He looks up to Dinkar’s poetry and quotes the poet’s famous work: ‘Lohe ke ped hare honge,’ (The dry trees turn green). “The only message of this poetry is that one should keep asking questions and keep trying to find answers,” he says.

Published – 07 Jun 2026 01:15 IST