Amid Opp fire, Govt to send higher education regulator Bill to panel

“Many members have requested that this is an extensive Bill and further deliberations are needed. So, the government proposes to send it to a Joint Committee of Parliament,” said Rijiju.

The Bill does not give the co­uncil the power to regulate fees in higher education institutions while tasking it with developing a policy to “prevent commercialisation of higher education”.

It, however, does give the regulatory council the power to impose penalties on higher education institutions for violations of the Act, ranging from not less than Rs 10 lakh to up to Rs 2 crore. The highest penalty is for instances in which an institution is established without the approval of the Centre or the state concerned

The higher education commission, which will be headed by a chairperson appointed by the President, will cover all central universities and colleges under it, institutes of national importance functioning under the administrative purview of the Ministry of Education including IITs, NITs, IISc, IISERs, IIMs, and IIITs.

At present, IITs and IIMs are not regulated by the UGC.

Opposing the Bill, Congress MP Manish Tewari said it “results in excessive centralisation of higher education and violates the constitutional distribution of legislative competence”.

He said that the Bill “suffers from excessive delegation of legislative power, which violates settled constitutional principles”.

Several MPs, including RSP member from Kollam (Kerala) N K Premachandran, DMK MP from Salem (Tamil Nadu) T M Selvaganapathy and Congress MP from Karur (Tamil Nadu) S Jothimani objected to nomenclature of the Bill, saying it directly violates the Constitution’s Article 348 (1) (B), which says that texts of all Bills should be in English.

“It is very difficult for me to pronounce the name of the Bill. A member from South India… My first objection is the nomenclature of Bill… I don’t know which language it is,” said Premachandran, adding that the Bill goes against the federal principles envisaged in the Constitution.

Jothimani alleged that the government is “imposing Hindi” through the Bill. “This is an attack on the federal structure,” she said.

TMC member Saugata Roy pointed out the “ineptness” of the Parliamentary Affairs Ministry. “We got a copy of the Bill late last night. The introduction of the Bill was not mentioned. The supplementary list of business was circulated at 1 pm this afternoon. Is this the way the Parliamentary Affairs ministry functions?” said Roy.