It's getting real hard to apply Hanlon's razor ("assume ignorance before malice") when it comes to egregious incompetence like this.

I wonder if this particular backdoor (front door?) has been used before; perhaps there are black-hat services that sell grade upgrades.

To note, this is the largest board of education in India, the most populous country in the world - some 29,000 schools are affiliated to it and millions of students enrolled in a curriculum designed and controlled by the CBSE

This is unbelievable!! At a certain point surely doing things the right way would be easier or more clearly correct? Like, if you were implementing this you’d obviously know that it’s insecure right??