Centre appoints new CBSE chairman, secretary amid OSM row
The Centre announced the appointment of the new Chairperson of the CBSE — Lokhande Prashant Sitaram and Varun Bharadwaj as the next Secretary of the Board.
Amid the ongoing On-Screen Marking row, the government transferred CBSE Chairman Rahul Singh and Secretary Himanshu Gupta on Tuesday.
Hours after ordering the transfer, the Centre announced the appointment of the new Chairperson of the CBSE — Lokhande Prashant Sitaram and Varun Bharadwaj as the next Secretary of the Board. Singh has been appointed as the Additional Secretary, Department of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare while Gupta has been sent to parent cadre, Ministry of Home Affairs with the condition of “extended cooling off”. Gupta will be eligible for another central deputation after December, 2030, as per Cabinet order.
The government has constituted a One-Member Committee to inquire into matters related to the procurement of services for the On-Screen Marking System by the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE). The committee will be headed by S Radha Chauhan, Chairperson of the Capacity Building Commission.
CBSE decided this year to shift Class 12 evaluation to a fully digital On-Screen Marking (OSM) system and a row kicked off after students reported blurred answer-book scans, missing pages and, in some cases, being shown another candidate’s answer script.
Experts from IIT, IIM have been roped in as glitches started popping up after scores of students applied for answer sheets and failed to make payment online.
The row ignited debate in the political front, with Opposition leaders including Rahul Gandhi criticising the Centre and urging for justice for students. Gandhi questioned the selection of the private company, which undertook the evaluation.
Gandhi said the firm “had already pulled off the same deed in Telangana in 2019” under a different name for the on-screen evaluation. “The company Coempt (Edu Teck), which was handed this responsibility (on-screen marking), had already pulled off the same deed in Telangana in 2019 under the name Globarena. Name changed — but the intent the same, the nature the same. Everyone knew the history, yet the contract was still awarded… This isn’t a mistake—it’s a deliberate conspiracy,” Rahul wrote on X. The CBSE later rejected the allegation, terming those “erroneous, misleading, and not based on facts”.
CBSE had issued a statement saying the contract was awarded to Coempt Edu Teck, Hyderabad and said: “CBSE has followed the General Financial Rules protocols scrupulously in the awarding of the contract to the agency. CBSE floated the RFP ( Request for Proposal) for digital evaluation of answer books for board exams 2026 on Central Public Procurement portal on 28.08.2025 and awarded the contract to the qualified bidder.”
CBSE’s Gen Z comrades — your hard work, your future, no one will be able to steal it. We will dig to the root of this conspiracy and uproot this corruption once and for all,” the statement said.
What is the Telangana connection?
In 2019, the Indian Express had reported that Telangana Intermediate Board Examination, over 3 lakh out of the 9 lakh students who appeared for the Class 12 exams were marked as failed, and a committee constituted by the state government to look into the issue had said the evaluators were under duress to complete the job quickly, which may have led to discrepancies in the results.
The Indian Express had also reported then that the committee had blamed Globarena Technologies for “minor technical mistakes’’. The company was involved then in the processing of results, and digitisation of marks.
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Amid the ongoing On-Screen Marking row, the government transferred CBSE Chairman Rahul Singh and Secretary Himanshu Gupta on Tuesday.
Hours after ordering the transfer, the Centre announced the appointment of the new Chairperson of the CBSE — Lokhande Prashant Sitaram and Varun Bharadwaj as the next Secretary of the Board. Singh has been appointed as the Additional Secretary, Department of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare while Gupta has been sent to parent cadre, Ministry of Home Affairs with the condition of “extended cooling off”. Gupta will be eligible for another central deputation after December, 2030, as per Cabinet order.
The government has constituted a One-Member Committee to inquire into matters related to the procurement of services for the On-Screen Marking System by the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE). The committee will be headed by S Radha Chauhan, Chairperson of the Capacity Building Commission.
CBSE decided this year to shift Class 12 evaluation to a fully digital On-Screen Marking (OSM) system and a row kicked off after students reported blurred answer-book scans, missing pages and, in some cases, being shown another candidate’s answer script.
Experts from IIT, IIM have been roped in as glitches started popping up after scores of students applied for answer sheets and failed to make payment online.
The row ignited debate in the political front, with Opposition leaders including Rahul Gandhi criticising the Centre and urging for justice for students. Gandhi questioned the selection of the private company, which undertook the evaluation.
Gandhi said the firm “had already pulled off the same deed in Telangana in 2019” under a different name for the on-screen evaluation. “The company Coempt (Edu Teck), which was handed this responsibility (on-screen marking), had already pulled off the same deed in Telangana in 2019 under the name Globarena. Name changed — but the intent the same, the nature the same. Everyone knew the history, yet the contract was still awarded… This isn’t a mistake—it’s a deliberate conspiracy,” Rahul wrote on X. The CBSE later rejected the allegation, terming those “erroneous, misleading, and not based on facts”.
CBSE had issued a statement saying the contract was awarded to Coempt Edu Teck, Hyderabad and said: “CBSE has followed the General Financial Rules protocols scrupulously in the awarding of the contract to the agency. CBSE floated the RFP ( Request for Proposal) for digital evaluation of answer books for board exams 2026 on Central Public Procurement portal on 28.08.2025 and awarded the contract to the qualified bidder.”
CBSE’s Gen Z comrades — your hard work, your future, no one will be able to steal it. We will dig to the root of this conspiracy and uproot this corruption once and for all,” the statement said.
What is the Telangana connection?
In 2019, the Indian Express had reported that Telangana Intermediate Board Examination, over 3 lakh out of the 9 lakh students who appeared for the Class 12 exams were marked as failed, and a committee constituted by the state government to look into the issue had said the evaluators were under duress to complete the job quickly, which may have led to discrepancies in the results.
The Indian Express had also reported then that the committee had blamed Globarena Technologies for “minor technical mistakes’’. The company was involved then in the processing of results, and digitisation of marks.
