The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has been reorganised with the appointments of Varun Bhardwaj as Secretary and senior officer Prashant Lokhande, IAS (AGMUT:2001), as Chairperson. The government has authorised a high-level investigation of the acquisition and deployment of the digital assessment platform, and the appointments follow mounting criticism of CBSE’s On-Screen Marking (OSM) system for Class 12 board exams.
The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet has accepted the appointment of Prashant Lokhande, an IAS officer from the 2001 AGMUT cadre who is now the Additional Secretary in the Ministry of Home Affairs, to the position of CBSE Chairperson, with the rank of Additional Secretary.
Rahul Singh, an IAS officer from the Bihar cadre who was appointed to the position of Additional Secretary in the Department of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare in 1996, is being succeeded by him.
As for the appointment of Varun Bhardwaj as Secretary of CBSE, he is a current Director in the Department of Higher Education and an Indian Information Service officer from the 2008 batch. Himanshu Gupta, an AGMUT cadre IAS officer from the class of 2012, is displaced by him. Under the Central Staffing Scheme, Bhardwaj will remain in the position until September 19, 2027.
The leadership changes have occurred at the same time as worries about the OSM system, which was used for the Class 12 exams this year, are becoming more vocal. Scanned answer sheets were used in place of actual answer books in the digital evaluation procedure.
Technical difficulties, payment-related issues, re-evaluation procedure delays, and purported inconsistencies in the system’s deployment have all been points of contention among students, parents, and teachers.
In response, the Centre has appointed S. Radha Chauhan, Chairperson of the Capacity Building Commission, to lead an inquiry committee consisting of one member. The committee’s job is to look into the procurement procedure and how the OSM platform was put into action.
The committee has been given the responsibility of looking into claims that procurement standards might have been loosened to benefit a certain vendor. The Department of Personnel and Training has asked the group to deliver its findings within one month.
At the same time, from June 2nd to June 6th, students who are eligible and have downloaded their assessed answer sheets can seek to have their marks verified and their answers reevaluated through CBSE’s re-evaluation window.
In order to resolve issues with examination governance and increase transparency in the board’s evaluation processes, the administrative reforms and enquiries are anticipated to be crucial.
Image: NDTV.in
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