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HRD ministry appoints Rajesh Kumar Chaturvedi as new CBSE chief.
After an almost 2-year wait, Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) gets a chairman in Rajesh Kumar Chaturvedi. He is a 1987 batch Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer and will be in charge of the school board until December 15, 2020.
After an almost 2-year wait, the headless Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) will get a chairman in Rajesh Kumar Chaturvedi. This period wasn’t due to want of candidates, there were some, however they who couldn’t appease the human resource development ministry’s requirements.
Chaturvedi is a 1987 batch Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer of the Madhya Pradesh cadre, will be in charge of the school board until December 15, 2020.
His posting prior to taking up the post of CBSE chairman was with the Seventh Pay Commission secretariat, whose recommendations on salary hikes for 10 million central government employees and pensioners have been approved by the government.
A post-grad in geography and fluent in Russian, Chaturvedi has 5 brief training stints at various IIMs in subjects ranging from information technology to public policy under his belt. His executive record sheet shows that he has attended 2 overseas training courses, including 1in the UK on human resource development.
Prior to his stint with the Pay Commission, he was the resident commissioner at Madhya Pradesh Bhawan in Delhi, liaising between state and central government administrations.
“A straight and result-oriented IAS officer” is how an employee at Madhya Pradesh Bhawan described him on condition of anonymity. “A pure government person – will listen to you but most likely not accept your views,” is how another government official described Chaturvedi. “He is well connected within the system.” This person didn’t want to be named either.
Chaturvedi has joined CBSE at a time when it is expected to play a wider role in education. “CBSE is not just a school board anymore. It has allied responsibilities in the higher education space,” an HRD ministry officer said on condition of anonymity.
CBSE is also responsible for conducting the Joint Entrance Exam Main (JEE-Main) and the National Eligibility Test (NET) for the University Grants Commission (UGC) for selection of professors at colleges and universities and Central Teacher Eligibility Test (CTET) for selection of school teachers.
As a chairman, he will play a key role in India’s skill development mission, given the government’s inclination to assimilate vocational training with school education. Chaturvedi, who will be supervising 10 regional offices of the CBSE, will also have to deal with allegations of lenient assessment system and marks inflation policy.