Amid the ongoing row over Central Board of Secondary Education’s (CBSE) On-Screen Marking (OSM) system, the Centre on Tuesday appointed senior IAS officer Lokhande Prashant Sitaram as the new CBSE Chairperson and Varun Bhardwaj as the board’s new Secretary.
Their appointment came hours after the government transferred the board’s Chairman Rahul Singh and Secretary Himanshu Gupta over the OSM issue and initiation of a probe into the alleged irregularities in granting the OSM contract to Coempt Edutech.
Sitaram is 2001-batch AGMUT cadre IAS officer currently serving as Additional Secretary in the Ministry of Home Affairs. He will take charge as CBSE Chairperson in the rank of Additional Secretary.
Varun Bhardwaj, who will be the new Secretary, is a 2008-batch Indian Information Service officer and Director in the Department of Higher Education. He will serve in the position until September 19, 2027, under the Central Staffing Scheme.
Earlier in the day, the government set up an inquiry committee to probe the procurement of On-Screen Marking (OSM) services by CBSE after a student whistle-blower exposed alleged irregularities in tendring process.
The one-member committee headed by Radha Chauhan, Chairperson, Capacity Building Commission, will submit its report to the Department of Personnel & Training within a month.
Meanwhile, Sarthak Sidhant, the class 12 student who exposed the alleged irregularities in the Central Board of Secondary Education’s OSM system tendering process, apepared before the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Education, Women, Children, Youth and Sports.
Sidhant gave a detailed presentation before the Parliamentary Panel on how, according to him, the CBSE “rewrote rules” to favour Coempt EduTeck, the firm under scrutiny after large scale discrepancies in evaluation of CBSE class 12th results.
According to the teenager, who claims to be one of the 17 lakh students that have been affected by the On Screen Marking system released by the Central Board of Secondary Education, the rules, terms, conditions, and clauses, were rewritten, to favor a specific vendor- Coempt Edu Teck.