Subodh Kumar Singh, the director general of the National Testing Agency (NTA), was placed on "compulsory wait" in the Department of Personnel and Training by the Centre on Saturday. This occurs in the midst of an expanding dispute around purported anomalies in the way tests are administered. The position of Director General, National Testing Agency (NTA), Ministry of Education, has been assigned to Pradeep Singh Kharola.
Who Is Subodh Kumar Singh?
Subodh Kumar Singh, a senior IAS officer, had been appointed as the Director General of the National Testing Agency (NTA) on June 12, 2023. He took over from Vineet Joshi as part of a government reshuffle. Singh, previously additional secretary in the Department of Food and Public Distribution, has an educational background in Electrical Engineering from IIT Roorkee and an MBA from IGNOU.
Singh hails from Uttar Pradesh and holds an MBA from the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), New Delhi, as well as engineering bachelor's and master's degrees from the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee. Earlier, Singh has also worked in several administrative roles, including as a district collector in different regions.
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From 2009 to 2018, he worked for three terms as the secretary to the chief minister of the state, Raman Singh, a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party. He held various positions in the department, including a joint secretary and deputy secretary for personnel and general administration, special secretary and head for management of personnel, and secretary to the chief minister, as reported by the Indian Express.
He held positions at the Chief Minister's Office as the managing director of the state's energy distribution agency, secretary of the department of mineral resources, and secretary of industries and commerce before accepting a central deputation in 2020, as mentioned by the Indian Express. The Ministry of Rural Development gave Subodh Kumar his first national award in 2002 for his outstanding work implementing the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. He was given an additional national award in 2019; this one was for introducing transparency to the mining auctioning process through digital transformation.
