Four former CBSE officials under CBI scanner

The Central Bureau of Invetigation (CBI) has registered a case against four former officers of CBSE on charges of misusing official position, circumventing reservation provisions, using forged and fake documents to get jobs in the Central Board of School Education and paying a consultant Rs 26.92 lakh for which no contract document could be located.

S P Rana, a Joint Secretary who retired while on suspension, dismissed Assistant Secretary Babita Rani, Assistant Secretary Shikha Tomar and Assistant Programmer Ruchin Tomar have been named in the case, the CBI has said.

Rana is accused of appointing Rani and Tomar, who belong to the Jat community, between 2012 and 2014 under the OBC quota though the community was not eligible for reservation at that time. It was also alleged that Rana facilitated the selection of Shikha Tomar, daughter-in-law of his brother, as Assistant Secretary on the basis of a fake and invalid experience certificate.

The FIR also claims that Rana allowed overpayment of Rs 26.92 lakh to M/s KPMG for its outsourced services for processing of an application for affiliation and upgradation of schools. During enquiry, CBSE was not able to provide the original file for the award of the contract to M/s KPMG.

During preliminary inquiry by the CBI, it came to light that Rana made repeated recommendations for Rani's appointment in 2012. "Rani was selected under the OBC category despite the fact that she was not a bonafide OBC candidate," the FIR said adding that the government had included the 'Jat' community in the OBC list only in March 2014.

"At the time of the interview, Rana was holding the charge of Joint Secretary (Administration and Legal), CBSE under whose supervision the selection was made. Rana further facilitated Rani by approving the request made by her for not verifying her credentials i.e. caste certificate, experience certificate, etc," the FIR said. Rani was dismissed from service on 31 January 2020.

The CBI FIR claimed that Shikha was appointed as Assistant Secretary in 2013 on the basis of a fake experience certificate issued from Ozark Global Information Services (OGIS), whose Director Atul Goel said that she never worked with OGIS and the certificate issued to her is a forged one. A charge sheet dated 12 November 2018 for major penalty proceedings has been issued by CBSE but she has not joined duty for long and not responding CBSE's correspondence.

Ruchin is accused of producing forged and fake degree certificate and mark sheets of Bachelor of Engineering in 2014 to land up in a job in CBSE. He was also terminated from the job after he did not provide original mark-sheets.