The government on Tuesday appointed senior IAS officer Lokhande Prashant Sitaram as the new Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) chief amid controversy over the board's newly introduced On-Screen Marking (OSM) system. The government also appointed senior bureaucrat Varun Bhardwaj, a 2008 batch Indian Information Service officer, as the new CBSE secretary.
The appointments come hours after CBSE chairman Rahul Singh and CBSE secretary Himanshu 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.
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. While Bharadwaj is currently working as director, Ministry of Education.
Centre forms panel to probe OSM procurement
Earlier in the day, the government constituted a one-member committee to investigate issues related to the procurement of services for the CBSE's On-Screen Marking (OSM) system. According to a Cabinet Secretariat memorandum issued on Tuesday, the committee will be headed by S Radha Chauhan, Chairperson of the Capacity Building Commission.
Chauhan has been authorised to seek assistance from officials of other departments whenever required, while the Capacity Building Commission will provide secretarial support to the inquiry panel.
The panel has been tasked with submitting its report to the Department of Personnel and Training within one month.
OSM system row
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.
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