Panel rejects Smriti's choice for CBSE chairman post

The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC) has rejected for the second time former HRD minister Smriti Irani’s choice of candidates for the post of CBSE chairman.

Moreover, the high-level panel, headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has curtailed the Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry’s future role in the appointment of the Central Board of Secondary Education’s (CBSE) chairman by deciding to fill up the vacant post now under the Central Staffing Scheme.

The Department of Personnel & Training (DoPT) has conveyed to the Ministry about the ACC’s decision taken recently. “The ministry received a letter from the (Department of Personnel and Training) DoPT today (on Wednesday),” official sources confirmed.

This comes within a week after the prime minister shifted Irani from the HRD Ministry to the Ministry of Textile.

Smriti had marked Sarvendra Vikram Bahadur Singh, director of the State Council Educational Research and Training in Lucknow, as her top choice for the post of the CBSE chief in a list of the names of three candidates sent to the DoPT in June when she was the HRD minister.

National University of Educational Planning and Administration professor Kamalakanta Biswal and additional principal director in the education wing of the Indian Navy, Khurram Shahzad Noor, were two other names that figured in Smriti’s list of candidates then sent by the HRD Ministry to the DoPT for ACC clearance.

“The ACC, however, rejected the ministry’s recommendation and decided to fill the CBSE chairman’s post from CSS, putting in abeyance the current recruitment rules,” official sources said. The ACC earlier rejected the name of Satbir Bedi, an Indian Administrative Service officer deployed as a joint secretary at the HRD Ministry, on the grounds that she did not fulfil the basic criteria of having worked with the department of education for at least three years.