Lokhande Prashant Sitaram appointed as new CBSE Chairperson: Who is he?

Lokhande Prashant Sitaram was appointed as the new Chairperson of the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), Ministry of Education, on Tuesday. He will replace Rahul Singh, who was shunted out of the national educational board by the government earlier in the day.

His appointment came hours after the Centre transferred CBSE Chairman Rahul Singh and Secretary Himanshu Gupta, and constituted a one-member inquiry committee to examine issues related to the procurement of services for the board's On-Screen Marking (OSM) system.

The development came amid controversy over alleged irregularities in the digital evaluation system for the Class 12 examination.

Who is Prashant Sitaram Lokhande

Prashant Lokhande is a 2001 batch IAS officer of the Arunachal Pradesh, Goa, Mizoram, and Union Territories or AGMUT cadre.

He earlier served as the Joint Secretary in the Department of Home at the Ministry of Home Affairs.

In March 2026, he was promoted (in-situ) to the position of Additional Secretary in the same department by the Government of India, as per a government order dated April 1, 2026.

According to The Secretariat, Lokhande Prashant Sitaram was born in November 1973. He reportedly holds a BE in Mechanical Engineering from Pune University and a Postgraduate Diploma in Industrial Engineering from NITIE Mumbai.

Sitaram's previous roles include Joint Secretary, Director, Deputy Secretary, Private Secretary, Counsellor, Deputy Commissioner, and Secretary. He was honoured with the State Award (Gold) for Meritorious Service twice, the report added. He is proficient in English, Hindi, and Marathi.

The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC) led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi approved his appointment as the chairperson of the CBSE in place of Rahul Singh, a Personnel Ministry order said, according to PTI.

Meanwhile, former chairman Rahul Singh was appointed as an additional secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare.

The ACC also approved premature repatriation of CBSE secretary Himanshu Gupta — a 2012 batch IAS officer — to his parent cadre, the Ministry of Home Affairs, on "administrative grounds" with the condition of "extended cooling off", the order said.

Varun Bhardwaj, a 2008 batch Indian Information Service officer, has been named the new CBSE secretary in place of Gupta. Bharadwaj is currently working as the director of the Ministry of Education.

CBSE controversy

The key appointments came in the backdrop of the controversy that erupted after some Class 12 students alleged that the scanned copies of their answer sheets uploaded by the board did not match their handwriting, raising concerns over possible answer-sheet mismatch in the On-Screen Marking (OSM) system.

The board also faced criticism over technical glitches, payment failures and delays in the verification and re-evaluation process, prompting demands for greater transparency and accountability.

Recently, Parliamentary Standing Committee on Education, Women, Children, Youth and Sports Chairman Digvijaya Singh heard a presentation by Class 12 student Sarthak Sidhant on Tuesday.

According to ANI, Sidhant highlighted alleged discrepancies in CBSE's OSM tendering process. The student claimed that changes in the tender clauses relating to performance standards, blacklisting provisions and qualification criteria appeared to favour a particular service provider.

Sidhant also advocated greater transparency in educational procurement systems and suggested that the OSM system should undergo wider pilot testing before large-scale implementation.

Earlier, Sarthak Sidhant had flagged at least 15 discrepancies in a video message, highlighting the “shady” background of Coempt.

It was alleged that the CBSE modified tender conditions multiple times before awarding the contract to COEMPT. The company COEMPT, which was assigned responsibility for the OSM system, had earlier operated under the name Globarena and was involved in a similar controversy in Telangana in 2019.

Sidhant had said, “I would like to highlight three or four of them. Let me give a background about 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 RFP (Request for Proposal).”

“What happens is the government issues a tender and asks the bidder to bid for it. CBSE issued this tender three times… I have compared the old RFP and the new RFP, and I found some discrepancies…,” Sidhantn said.

He claimed, “The first discrepancy is that there were three clauses of poor performances which was completely wiped out from the new RFP. In the earlier RFP, there was a clause called blacklisted earlier, whereas in the new RFP, it was changed to blacklisted currently.”

"Why would the board want a service provider which was blacklisted earlier? The third thing I found out is the 50 crore limit, which you needed to qualify, and coempt qualified that by 1.7% … The time frame of corrupt practices was halved, and there were project criteria changes… It shows a pattern that the industry giant TCS was not preferred, but coempt was preferred, which works as a very fragmented group of institutions…,” Sidhant said.