Legislating matters on higher education not wrong: Minister

Updated on: Thursday, January 12, 2012

In wake of a few educational bodies terming as unconstitutional the Centre's move to enact some bills on regulation of higher education sector.

The HRD Ministry made it clear it has the Constitutional rights to legislate matters concerning higher education.
 
The ministry said that the Constitution places certain educational matters within the exclusive jurisdiction of the Union under various entries.
 
"These entries are overarching in nature. The competence to legislate on matters concerning coordination and determination of standards of higher education and research lies with Parliament," Joint Secretary in the HRD Ministry R P Sisodia said.
 
The Association of Self-Financing Universities had termed the bills unconstitutional, as Parliament lacks the legislative competence to enact them.
 
The Bills in question are the Educational Tribunals Bill, 2010, the Prohibition of Unfair Practices in Technical Educational Institutions, Medical Educational Institutions and Universities Bill, 2010, and the National Accreditation Regulatory Authority for Higher Educational Institutions Bill, 2010. All these Bills are currently pending in Parliament.
 
The Education Promotion Society of India had also raised objections to various provisions of these Bills while some sections feared the legislations will erode the rights of the states over education sector.
 
Sisodia said the three Bills have been formulated under Entry 66 of the Union List and not under Entry 25 of the Concurrent List as part of Centre's agenda of reforming the higher education sector.

The objective is to ensure speedy delivery of justice on matters related to higher education, providing quality assurances and bringing in transparency in matters of admission, he said, refuting claims of the bills being "draconian" in nature.
 
"...it is an effort by the government to infuse accountability in the system, improve quality and institute effective adjudication machinery," Sisodia said.
 
Talking about the provision of unfair practices bill which includes imposing a penalty of Rs 1 crore against offenders, he said the penalty is only an outer limit and should not be interpreted that in every case this penalty should be levied.
 
He also dismissed claims that these Bills will take away powers of private institutes to fix their own fee structure saying "the Unfair Practices Bill merely makes it mandatory to publish fees charged. It does not intend fixing fees"

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