“The nine-mark increase in Physics that is being referred to did not result from the re-evaluation process. Those were my actual marks, which the CBSE had initially failed to award because of the exchanged answer sheet issue,” he told Indianexpress.com.

His latest remarks come a day after the CBSE reportedly issued a statement rejecting what it described as “factually incorrect” claims and a “blatant lie” regarding his re-evaluation outcome.

After receiving his revised results, Shrivastava said the re-evaluation had yielded only a two-mark increase overall: one each in Mathematics and Computer Science, and there was no change in the Physics score through the re-evaluation process.

Shrivastava’s case first came to national attention in May after he alleged that the Physics answer sheet uploaded by CBSE during the verification process did not belong to him. Following widespread attention on social media, the Board acknowledged that an inadvertent answer-sheet exchange had taken place and later shared his actual Physics answer script. His Physics marks were subsequently revised from 65 to 74 after the correct answer book was identified.

Fresh questions

The episode also raised fresh questions about CBSE’s newly introduced On-Screen Marking (OSM) system. Earlier, Indianexpress.com had reported that the Physics answer script eventually shared with Shrivastava carried prominent red-ink ticks, circled marks, and handwritten evaluator notations typically associated with conventional manual checking rather than digital OSM annotations.

Read | CBSE OSM Row: Vedant’s ‘corrected’ Physics answer sheet shows signs of manual evaluation

The observations led to questions over whether the paper had been manually re-examined after the answer-sheet mix-up came to light publicly. However, CBSE has not issued any separate clarification on the presence of those manual markings or whether they indicate a subsequent offline review of the answer book.

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Meanwhile, the CBSE on Sunday also said it has declared the outcomes of 99.7 per cent of the applications received for Verification of Issues Observed and Re-evaluation for the Class 12 examination. The Board said the remaining applications are in the final stages of processing and the results will be released shortly.

The Board also noted that last year, the process of declaring re-evaluation results began on June 27 and concluded on July 11.

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Beyond the dispute with the Board, Shrivastava now plans to drop a year and prepare for the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) for engineering admissions. For this year, he said he is focused on the National Defence Academy examination, as well as brushing up on his studies and preparing for JEE (Main) 2027.

The answer-sheet mix-up also had a direct bearing on his eligibility; the 75 per cent aggregate criterion required for IIT and NIT admissions was not met with the incorrect Physics score of 65, but was satisfied once his actual marks of 74 were restored. His overall aggregate now stands at 87 per cent. “If the NDA works out, then okay. Otherwise, I will give JEE next year and go to college,” he said.