E-Paper
Refer Higher Education Commission of India Bill to House panel: Digvijaya Singh
In a letter to Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan, Singh called the bill a significant legislation that majorly rewrites the existing education governance architecture
Congress lawmaker Digvijaya Singh, who heads the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Education, Women, Children, Youth and Sports, on Friday urged Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan to refer the Higher Education Commission of India (HECI) Bill to his panel for examination and discussion before it is taken up in Parliament during the winter session commencing from December 1.
In a letter to Pradhan, Singh called the bill a significant legislation that majorly rewrites the existing education governance architecture. “...it is critical that it be examined and discussed by the Parliamentary standing committee before it is taken up by the Parliament as a whole. This is, after all, the very purpose of the standing committees,” he wrote in the letter also marked to parliamentary affairs minister Kiren Rijiju.
He requested that the bill be sent to the panel with a deadline extending to the first phase of the budget session. Singh hoped the matter would receive urgent attention and that the government would respond at the earliest.
The bill seeks to set up HECI as a single regulator for higher education, subsuming the University Grants Commission, the All India Council for Technical Education, and the National Council for Teacher Education. It proposes to end the system of multiple regulators for approvals and compliance.
The National Education Policy 2020 envisages HECI for “light but tight” regulation in higher education. It says that the regulatory system needs a complete overhaul to re-energise the higher education sector and enable it to thrive.
In February 2025, the Singh-led panel raised concerns over the proposed HECI as the principal regulator of higher education, warning of excessive centralisation and inadequate representation of states.
