The Center on Tuesday replaced the chairman and secretary of the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) and launched a probe into the procurement of services for the controversial and glitch-prone On-Screen Marking (OSM) system amid allegations of irregularities in the large-scale deployment of the platform that was used to evaluate Class 12 answer scripts.
People familiar with the developments said that these moves came after the intervention of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Read also | Teen whistleblower, portal chaos, cyber attacks and change in leadership: How CBSE’s OSM row escalated
Transfer of Chairman and Secretary CBSE
CBSE Chairman Rahul Singh and Secretary Himanshu Gupta have been transferred and replaced by senior bureaucrats Prashant Lokhande and Varun Bhardwaj respectively, the government said in separate notifications.
At the same time, through a Cabinet Secretariat Office memorandum, the government has constituted a single-member committee comprising retired Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer S Radha Chauhan, to probe the issues related to procurement of services for the OSM system by the CBSE.
The committee will submit its report to the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) within a month, the memorandum said. Chouhan is currently the Chairman of the Capacity Building Committee (CBC), a body tasked with leading the unification of the country’s civil services.
HT had earlier reported that the OSM contract was awarded to Hyderabad-based Coempt Edu Teck on December 5, just 74 days before the first board exams began on February 17.
Read also | Coempt beat TCS by nearly 60% in the race to secure CBSE’s OSM portal contract
Congress moves to move: “eye wash”
The Opposition Congress said the move to transfer two senior CBSE officials was an “eyewash” and a “cover-up”. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi demanded the dismissal of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan and the ordering of an independent judicial investigation immediately.
Earlier in the day, the outgoing CBSE secretary faced a parliamentary committee that was holding a hearing on the OSM issue.
According to people familiar with the proceedings, MPs repeatedly sought a response from CBSE on the OSM tender process but received few direct answers. “I don’t actually have the facts of the matter at the moment and I only have what I have from memory,” Singh told the committee.
Singh, a 1996 batch IAS officer from Bihar cadre, has now been posted as additional secretary in the agriculture ministry. He was appointed as CBSE Chairman on March 13, 2024, and was extended till November 11, 2027 in August last year.
His replacement, Lokhande, is a 2001 batch IAS officer of AGMUT cadre and is currently serving as Additional Secretary in the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), New Delhi, a position he has held since April 1, 2026.
Himanshu Gupta, a 2012 batch IAS officer who was appointed as Secretary, CBSE on November 30, 2023, has been transferred to his father’s cadre, AGMUT.
The decision was based on a proposal by the Education Ministry’s Department of School Education and Literacy (DoSEL) to “prematurely repatriate” Gupta on administrative grounds on the condition of “extended cooling off”, according to an order issued by the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT). He will be eligible for another central assignment after December 12, 2030.
His replacement, Varun Bhardwaj, was Director of the Higher Education Department in the Ministry of Education.
Read also | Prashant Lokhande has been appointed as the new Chairman of CBSE Bank after the OSM row exploded
Why this step?
The moves come in the wake of outrage among parents and teachers, and a series of HT reports covering what appears to be a hasty process to roll out a brand new mechanism to score nearly 10 million answer texts despite concerns.
As reported by HT, the CBSE board in June 2025 recommended pilot projects across regional offices before rolling it out nationwide – a suggestion on which the board did not take any action.
HT also reported that an internal monitoring report from the pilot run of the OSM system, conducted in five Delhi schools in January 2026, cited at least 36 technical, operational and assessment-related concerns – including risks of “blind or superficial screening”, weak supervisory oversight, absence of safeguards against data loss, and a finding that the system provided no opportunity for assessors to deliberate or reach consensus on marks.
HT also reported that CBSE floated three tenders between February 2025 and August 2025 with relaxation in rules related to scanning and others, in a bid to onboard a company to float OSM in 2026.
