The Central government on Monday (December 15, 2025) proposed that the new Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan (VBSA) Bill, 2025, which seeks to overhaul India’s higher education regulatory framework by replacing the University Grants Commission (UGC), be sent to a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) with members from both Houses.
Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan on Monday (December 15, 2025) afternoon tabled the Bill even as MPs from across Opposition parties opposed it, arguing that the Bill represented “executive overreach”, subjected higher educational institutes to “pervasive executive control, graded autonomy, intrusive compliance requirements, severe penalties, and closure powers”, and went against the principles of federalism.
Opposition MPs from Kerala and Tamil Nadu objected to the nomenclature of the legislation, arguing that by choosing to name the Bill and the new authorities proposed in it in Hindi, the Union government was “imposing Hindi” on non-Hindi-speaking States.
Trinamool Congress MP Sougata Ray questioned the functioning of the Parliamentary Affairs Ministry, asking why the copy of this Bill was circulated to MPs late on Sunday night, and why it was not in the Parliament’s list of business for Monday till afternoon.
After hearing the objections to the introduction of the Bill – which will subsume the functions of the UGC, the All India Council for Technical Education, and the National Council for Teacher Education – Mr. Pradhan moved to introduce the Bill amid uproar. Following this, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju rose and said the government had decided to propose that this Bill be sent to a joint committee constituted by the Speaker.
Mr. Rijiju said that in the meeting of the Lok Sabha’s Business Advisory Committee, “Many members have requested that this is an extensive Bill and we need further deliberation on it.”
The Coordination Committee Against HECI (VBSA) on Monday (December 15, 2025) afternoon held a press conference in New Delhi, insisting that the Bill was a “revived” version of the 2018 Higher Education Commission of India Bill, which had received thousands of adverse reactions and was subsequently put on hold. The committee, a coalition of over 30 teacher and student associations and unions across the country, argued that this Bill was a “structural shift to dismantle public-funded higher education in India”.
The Bill provides for the establishment of a 12-member VBSA umbrella commission as a regulatory body, under which the regulatory, accreditation, and standards councils will function. It notably divorces the UGC’s grants-disbursal power from the regulatory body, handing this funding power over to “mechanisms devised by the Ministry of Education”.
In their objections to the VBSA Bill, 2025, the coordination committee said that de-linking funding from regulation would end up making grant allocation “more bureaucratic, arbitrary, and subject to political considerations”, and said that provisions allowing institutes the power to raise their own finances would naturally lead to many institutes doubling down on profit as a motivation.
The coalition of associations added that the composition of the VBSA was completely in the hands of the Union government under the new Bill, adding that it provides for only two teacher representatives from State institutes, who will also be nominated by the Centre.
Opposing the introduction of the Bill, Congress MP Manish Tewari said that while Parliament had the mandate to legislate on the determination of standards, this power is limited, adding, “The Bill goes far beyond standards and intrudes into administration, affiliation, establishment, and closure of university campuses, their institutional autonomy.”
“Vast and substantive matters” from accreditation frameworks, degree-granting powers, penalties, and institutional autonomy, Mr. Tewari said, “are left to be determined by rules, regulations, and executive direction”. He added that it undermined the autonomy of statutory regulatory bodies, and also opposed the overriding powers granted in the Bill to supersede any other laws and existing regulatory structures.
N.K. Premachandran, RSP MP from Kerala, spoke about how the naming of the Bill will be a difficulty in many States where Hindi is not spoken. “I cannot even pronounce the name of the Bill, and cannot understand what Adhishthan means,” he said, further speaking to how this Bill proposes to take over the regulation of even universities set up under State laws.
Mr. Ray argued that Governors in West Bengal and Kerala were “already interfering with the functioning” of State universities, adding that the VBSA Bill now “give legitimate power to the Centre to control the functioning of higher educational institutes and universities”.
Congress MP S. Jothimani said there was no “technical reason” to name the legislation in Hindi. “Fifty-three times, Hindi words have been used in this Bill,” Ms. Jothimani said, trying to read the Hindi names of the councils, before breaking out in Tamil, “This is not something that I, we will be able to understand. Just like you do not understand what I am saying when I switch to Tamil, we will not be able to understand when you try to push Hindi onto us. This is just another way to impose Hindi.”
At a press conference, Rashtriya Janata Dal Rajya Sabha MP Manoj Kumar Jha cautioned everyone to be prepared for “a difficult battle ahead”, adding that the government’s wish to refer the Bill to a joint committee was a sign of the government merely postponing the inevitable.
Mr. Jha, an academic himself, said that while India’s higher education system had a lot of problems before, this Bill, if passed, will not leave stakeholders in a position to even talk about the problems in the system.
Published – December 15, 2025 10:12 pm IST
