Govt Appoints Lokhande Prashant Sitaram as New CBSE Chairman Amid OSM Row

New Delhi: The Centre has appointed senior IAS officer Lokhande Prashant Sitaram as the new Chairperson of the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), hours after removing outgoing chairman Rahul Singh amid controversy over the Class 12 On-Screen Marking (OSM) system.

The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet approved the reshuffle on Tuesday. Sitaram, a 2001-batch AGMUT cadre IAS officer currently serving as Additional Secretary in the Ministry of Home Affairs, replaces Rahul Singh, who has been posted as Additional Secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare.

In a parallel move, CBSE Secretary Himanshu Gupta, a 2012-batch IAS officer, was prematurely repatriated to his parent cadre, the Ministry of Home Affairs, on “administrative grounds” with extended cooling-off.

Varun Bhardwaj, a 2008-batch Indian Information Service officer and currently Director in the Department of Higher Education, has been named the new CBSE Secretary on deputation till September 19, 2027.

The changes follow mounting complaints from Class 12 students who alleged mismatched scanned answer sheets on the CBSE portal, raising questions over OSM evaluation integrity.