Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) president Rahul Singh and secretary Himanshu Gupta have been transferred amid growing scrutiny over the procurement process for the board’s on-screen marking (OSM) system and alleged irregularities in the large-scale rollout of the platform used to evaluate Class 12 answer scripts, people familiar with the matter said on Tuesday.
Their new posts were not immediately clear.
The government has also constituted a single-member committee comprising retired Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer S. Radha Chauhan, to investigate the issues related to procurement of services for OSM system by CBSE. Chouhan is currently the Chairman of the Capacity Building Committee (CBC), a body tasked with leading the unification and coordination of the country’s civil services.
The committee will submit its report to the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) within a month, an office note issued by the Cabinet Secretariat on Tuesday said.
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“The Chairman of the Committee is authorized to obtain the assistance of officials from other offices, as required. Secretarial assistance to the Committee will be provided by CBC,” the memo said.
The formation of the committee comes in the wake of the Union Education Ministry’s extensive examination into alleged irregularities in the CBSE bidding process and cybersecurity vulnerabilities linked to the board’s digital assessment ecosystem.
It also comes in the wake of anger among parents and teachers amid what appears to be a rushed process to roll out a brand new mechanism to record nearly 10 million answer texts despite concerns.
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CBSE officials denied allegations of any wrongdoing and maintained that the tender process was conducted in accordance with the General Financial Rules (GFR) and applicable government procurement procedures.
HT had previously reported that the contract was awarded to Coempt Edu Teck on December 5, just 74 days before the first board exams began on February 17.
