Senior IAS officer Lokhande Prashant Sitaram appointed new CBSE chief

New Delhi: Senior bureaucrats Lokhande Prashant Sitaram and Varun Bhardwaj were on Tuesday appointed as the CBSE's new chairperson and secretary, after the incumbents were shunted out amid the On-Screen Marking (OSM) system row.

Sitaram, a 2001 batch Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer of the Arunachal Pradesh, Goa, Mizoram, and Union Territories or AGMUT cadre, is currently an additional secretary in the Ministry of Home Affairs.

The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC) led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi approved his appointment as the chairperson of the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) in place of Rahul Singh, a Personnel Ministry order said.

Singh has been appointed as additional secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare.

The ACC has also approved premature repatriation of CBSE secretary Himanshu Gupta -- a 2012 batch IAS officer -- to his parent cadre, the Ministry of Home Affairs, on "administrative grounds" with the condition of "extended cooling off", the order said.

He will be eligible for another central deputation after December 12, 2030, the order said.

Varun Bhardwaj, a 2008 batch Indian Information Service officer, has been named the new CBSE secretary in place of Gupta.

Bharadwaj is currently working as director, Ministry of Education.

The appointments come hours after Singh and Gupta were shunted out of the national educational board in the wake of alleged irregularities in the digital evaluation system for the Class 12 examination process.

The CBSE has been embroiled in a controversy after some Class 12 students alleged that the scanned copies of their answer sheets uploaded by the board did not match their handwriting, raising concerns over possible answer-sheet mismatch in the OSM system.

Concerns were raised by students and parents over the implementation of the OSM system in the CBSE board examination process.

The board has faced criticism over technical glitches, payment failures and delays in the verification and re-evaluation process, prompting demands for greater transparency and accountability.