Officials shunted out back-to-back in education ministry shake-up amid exam rows

Amid controversies over NEET paper leaks and CBSE digital evaluation glitches, the Centre reshuffled several senior Education Ministry officials. The administrative overhaul comes as opposition parties intensify demands for Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan's resignation and broader accountability over exam irregularities

New Delhi: The recent controversies surrounding the education ministry, including paper leaks and the CBSE digital evaluation glitches, have triggered a series of shunting of top officials, even as the opposition continues to demand the resignation of the minister in charge, Dharmendra Pradhan.

As student protests against the NEET-UG paper leak flared up, the Centre removed top bureaucrat Vineet Joshi as the higher education secretary late on Thursday night.

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Joshi, known to be a multi-tasker and someone close to the government, has held some of the most influential positions in India’s education system, including as chairman of the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), first director-general of the National Testing Agency (NTA), and acting chairman of the University Grants Commission (UGC).

He was also holding the charge of school education secretary after Sanjay Kumar retired from the post on June 30.

Joshi’s tenure at the NTA saw the rollout of the Common University Entrance Test (CUET) for undergraduate admissions, even as he faced the backlash the government received over glitches in the crucial examination.

He was then appointed chief secretary in Manipur in 2023, when ethnic violence erupted in the northeastern state.

After his shunting as the higher education secretary, Joshi has been appointed secretary in the Panchayati Raj ministry.

While Naresh Kumar Gangwar has been appointed as the higher education secretary, T K Anil Kumar has been brought in as the school education secretary.

Gangwar was posted as secretary in the animal husbandry ministry, where he made news for different reasons.

According to media reports, three family members of Gangwar, a 1994-batch Rajasthan-cadre IAS officer, received more than Rs 1.16 crore in subsidies across five years under the National Horticulture Board scheme.

Gangwar had earlier served as the additional secretary in the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, where he handled pollution control and hazardous substances.

TK Anil Kumar was earlier the additional secretary in the rural development ministry.

The education ministry, which has been at the centre of controversy for the past two months, first for errors in CBSE’s introduction of on-screen marking (OSM) for Class 12, and then the NEET paper leak law, has seen more officials being removed in recent times.

Last month, the ministry shunted out both CBSE Chairman Rahul Singh and Secretary Himanshu Gupta, and replaced them with Lokhande Prashant Sitaram and Varun Bhardwaj, respectively.

The action followed a massive uproar over technical glitches, blurred answer sheets, and evaluation errors in the OSM system used for CBSE Class 12 board exams.

Also removed in the series was Aanchal Katiyar, who was the chief of media and communication in the ministry. Katiyar was moved to the animal husbandry ministry while Rashmi Roja Thushara Nair was appointed in her place.

Student-led protests over the NEET-UG have snowballed into a nationwide agitation, driven by paper leaks, alleged police crackdowns on demonstrators and ongoing demands for accountability.

The opposition parties have joined the chorus and are demanding Pradhan’s resignation, besides a debate in Parliament on the issue.

When the education ministry was caught in a similar storm in 2024, following allegations of NEET paper leak and the confirmed leak of the UGC-NET question paper, then-NTA director-general Subodh Kumar Singh was shown the door.

Singh was put on compulsory wait for nearly four months before being appointed additional secretary in the steel ministry. He was later repatriated to his Chhattisgarh cadre.