Lokhande Prashant Sitaram Appointed New CBSE Chairman: Who Is He? | Today’s news
Lokhande Prashant Sitaram was on Tuesday appointed as the new chairman of the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), Ministry of Education. He replaces Rahul Singh, who was removed from the National Education Committee by the government earlier in the day.
His appointment came hours after the Center transferred CBSE chairman Rahul Singh and secretary Himanshu Gupta and set up a one-member inquiry committee to look into issues related to procurement of services for the board’s on-screen marking (OSM) system.
Read also | OSM System Line: The Center constitutes an investigative committee; transfers CBSE top brass
The development came amid controversy over alleged irregularities in the digital grading system for the Class 12 examination.
Who is Prashant Sitaram Lokhande?
Prashant Lokhande is a 2001 batch IAS officer in the Arunachal Pradesh, Goa, Mizoram and Union Territories or AGMUT cadre.
Earlier, he served as Joint Secretary, Ministry of Home Affairs, Ministry of Home Affairs.
In March 2026, he was promoted (in-situ) to the post of Additional Secretary in the same department by the Government of India. government regulations of April 1, 2026.
According to the Secretariat, Lokhande Prashant Sitaram was born in November 1973. He is said to have a BE in Mechanical Engineering from Pune University and a Post Graduate Diploma in Industrial Engineering from NITIA Mumbai.
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Sitaram’s previous roles include Joint Secretary, Director, Deputy Secretary, Private Secretary, Advisor, Deputy Commissioner and Secretary. He was awarded the State Medal of Merit (Gold) twice, the report added. He is proficient in English, Hindi and Marathi.
The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC) headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi approved his appointment as CBSE chairman in place of Rahul Singh, according to an order from the Ministry of Personnel, PTI reported.
Meanwhile, former chairman Rahul Singh has been appointed as additional secretary in the ministry of agriculture and farmer welfare.
Read also | SC refuses to maintain CBSE’s policy of mandating two regional languages for class 9-10
The ACC also approved the early repatriation of CBSE secretary Himanshu Gupta — a 2012 batch IAS officer — to his parent cadre, the home ministry, on “administrative grounds” subject to an “extended cooling off period”, the order said.
Varun Bhardwaj, an Indian Information Service officer in 2008, was appointed as the new secretary of CBSE in place of Gupta. Bharadwaj currently serves as Director of the Ministry of Education.
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The CBSE Controversy
The key meetings came against the backdrop of a controversy that erupted after some Class 12 students claimed that the scanned copies of their answer sheets uploaded by the boards did not match their handwriting, raising concerns about a possible mismatch of the answer sheet in the On Screen Marking (OSM) system.
The board has also faced criticism for technical glitches, payment failures and delays in the verification and revaluation process, prompting calls for greater transparency and accountability.
Parliamentary Standing Committee on Education, Women, Children, Youth and Sports Chairman Digvijaya Singh on Tuesday heard a presentation by Class 12 student Sarthak Sidhant.
According to ANI, Sidhant raised the alleged irregularities in the OSM selection process to CBSE. The student argued that changes to the tender clauses relating to performance standards, blacklisting provisions and qualification criteria appeared to favor a particular service provider.
Sidhant also argued for greater transparency in education procurement systems and suggested that the OSM system should undergo wider pilot testing before wide-scale implementation.
Read also | Sarthak Sidhant addresses a parliamentary panel at CBSE OSM Row
Earlier, Sarthak Sidhant had flagged at least 15 irregularities in a video message that highlighted Coempt’s “shady” background.
CBSE claimed that it had changed the terms of tender several times before awarding the contract to COEMPT. COEMPT, which was given responsibility for the OSM system, previously operated under the name Globarena and was involved in a similar controversy in Telangana in 2019.
Sidhant said, “I would like to highlight three or four of them. Let me give you a background on Coempt. It was known as Globarena and they have a very shady background. 23 students killed themselves because of coempt… Now I would like to tell you about the RFP (Request for Proposal).”
“What happens is the government floats a tender and asks bidders to apply for it. CBSE floated this tender three times… I compared the old RFP and the new RFP and found some discrepancies…” Sidhantn said.
He claimed: “The first discrepancy is that there were three poor performance clauses that were completely deleted from the new RFP. In the earlier RFP, the clause was called previously blacklisted, while in the new RFP it was changed to blacklisted currently.”
“Why would the board want a service provider that was blacklisted before? The third thing I found is the 50 million crown limit you needed to qualify and you qualified by 1.7%… The time frame for corrupt practices was cut in half and there were changes in the project criteria… It shows a pattern that the industrial giant TCS was not preferred but the coempt was preferred which operates as a very fragmented group of Sidhan institutions.”
