Mandeep Bhandari appointed chairperson of India’s CBSE

Mandeep Bhandari, a 2001-batch Indian Administrative Service officer, has been appointed chairperson of the Central Board of Secondary Education, according to a notification issued by India’s Appointments Committee of the Cabinet on Friday. Bhandari belongs to the AGMUT cadre and has held administrative posts in Jammu and Kashmir and central government departments. Before his appointment, he was principal secretary to the Lieutenant-Governor of Jammu and Kashmir.

He had served in the Lieutenant-Governor’s office in Jammu since March 2023 and also held the additional position of chief executive officer of the Shri Amarnathji Shrine Board. In 2023, he was appointed an additional director on the board of Jammu and Kashmir Bank. Bhandari previously served as additional chief executive officer of the Mata Vaishno Devi Shrine Board and as private secretary to the Minister of Human Resource Development.

His earlier roles included deputy commissioner and district magistrate in Leh and Jammu. He holds an MBBS degree and served as Joint Secretary for Drugs in the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare during the COVID-19 pandemic. He has also worked as secretary in the Power Development Department and as a sub-divisional magistrate in Budgam.

His appointment comes while the CBSE is dealing with controversy over the implementation of its onscreen marking system for Class 12 board examinations earlier this year. The board’s information-technology systems also faced scrutiny after ethical hackers accessed sensitive student information through its web portals. The supplied report did not state when Bhandari would formally assume the post or identify his predecessor.