• Source:JND

The Appointment Committee of the Cabinet has appointed Lokhande Prasad Sitaram as new chairperson of the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) and Varun Bharadwaj as the Secretary of the board.

The appointments came as the government has swung into action to contain the On-Screen Marking system controversy. In a first administrative action, the Centre today transferred IAS Rahul Singh and Himanshu Gupta who were serving as CBSE Chairperson and Secretary.

Singh has been sent to the Agricultural Ministry as additional secretary. Gupta, on the other hand, has been repatriated to his parent cadre, Ministry of Home Affairs, on administrative ground with the condition of 'cooling off'.

Gupta will only be eligible for another deputation at Centre after December 12, 2030.

IAS S Radha Chauhan to probe tender process

The Centre has also appointed a one-member committee of IAS officer S Radhan Chauhan to look into the alleged irregularities in tender process involved in giving contract to Coempt Edu Teck, a Hyderabad-based company, for digital evaluation of this year's Class 12 exam answer sheets.

ALSO READ: CBSE Row: Who Is S Radha Chauhan, Appointed By Centre To Investigate OSM Tender?

The controversy erupted after students alleged mismatch in evaluated copies and their original copies. The row soon escalated as a Class 12 student Sarthak Sidhant alleged irregularities in tender process.

Tender process under scrutiny

He claimed that eligibility and evaluation criteria were altered before the contract was awarded to Coempt. Earlier today, he appeared before the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Education, Women, Children, Youth and Sports.

He gave a presentation on his findings on the alleged irregularities in front of Congress MP Digvijay Singh-led panel.

He reportedly told the panel that Coempt used to be known as Globarena Technologies before and was behind the 2019 Telangana Intermediate exam failure. Back then missing marks and other systemic discrepancies were flagged. The probe committee of the Telangana government found there were "systemic failures, procedural collapse, and glaring negligence."

The firm later changed its name to Coempt. He added that in the old RfP, CBSE had mentioned that the bidder would be liable to disqualification and could be blacklisted.

However, in the new RfP and the contract signed with Coempt do mention hefty penalties but 'blacklisting' clause was missing.

Flaws in OSM portal

Another issue that marred CBSE's OSM was critical flaws in its portal that made it vulnerable to hacking and unauthorised access.

A 19-year-old cybersecurity researcher, Nisarga Adhikary, claimed that a "hardcore master password" was visible inside the portal's JavaScript bundle. Among other vulnerabilities, he flagged client-side OTP validation, missing route protections, password reset flaws and what he described as a "systemic IDOR vulnerability".

ALSO READ: CBSE Chairman, Secretary Transferred; Inquiry Committee Formed As Centre Takes Big Action Amid OSM Row

He added that he used them to access the evaluation board as an examiner where he could easily view and edit marks. "I was able to log in as an examiner and reach the evaluation dashboard, where I could view and edit marks," he wrote in his technical blog titled, "Exposing Critical Vulnerabilities in CBSE's On-Screen Marking Portal".

He added that he first reported the vulnerabilities in February to CERT-In, but "they were unable to patch most of them." The OSM system is facing scrutiny on three core aspects, the evaluation error, tender process irregularities and low-digital security.


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