The 31-member joint committee, headed by Bharatiya Janata Party MP D. Purandeswari, is scheduled to meet this week on March 11 and 12 in the presence of officials from the education and law ministries. File | Photo credit: ANI
A joint committee of Parliament examining the Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan Bill, which seeks to replace the UGC, AICTE and NCTE with a single regulatory body, is scheduled to interact with officials from all three regulatory bodies this week.
Opinion | A bill that reshapes the regulation of higher education
The 31-member joint committee, headed by Bharatiya Janata Party MP D. Purandeswari, is scheduled to meet this week on Wednesday (March 11, 2026) and Thursday (March 12, 2026) for its second and third sessions, during which these interactions are expected to take place, in the presence of officials from the education and law ministries.
Significantly, the University Grants Commission, the body the VBSA bill seeks to replace, has not had a full-time chairman since April last year when the then chairman M. Jagadesh Kumar retired. Vineet Joshi, Secretary, Department of Higher Education, Ministry of Education, holds the additional charge of the post as of now. Mr. Joshi is also represented in the UGC in his official capacity as Secretary for Higher Education. The UGC website also does not list the vice-chairman.
The first meeting of the joint committee to consider the bill was held on 26 February, during which officials from the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Justice briefed members on the circumstances under which the bill was introduced in the 2025 winter session of Parliament. Officials gave a presentation at the meeting that showed an outline of the new regulatory structure as proposed in the bill.
The bill was introduced as a measure to “overhaul the regulatory framework” of higher education in India. It is to set up a 12-member Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan as an umbrella committee under which regulatory (viniyaman), accreditation (gunvatta) and standards (manak) boards will function.
The Bill seeks to take over the functions of the UGC, the All India Council for Technical Education and the National Council for Teacher Education and repeal the Acts through which these bodies were set up. The VBSA bill also significantly separates the grant disbursement function from the regulatory authority, with government officials saying grant disbursement mechanisms will be designed by the ministry in due course.
While the interaction with the UGC representatives was scheduled for Wednesday (March 11), along with the Architecture Council representatives, the interaction with AICTE and NCTE was fixed for the next day.
Even when the bill was introduced, opposition parties opposed it, arguing that the law constituted “executive overreach”, subjected higher education institutions to “pervasive executive control, graded autonomy, intrusive compliance requirements, severe penalties and closure powers”, and was inconsistent with the principles of federalism.
In their first presentation to the joint committee that looked into the bill, government officials said the National Education Policy (NEP) was drafted after one of the widest public consultations ever, adding that the VBSA bill was circulated for consultation among 39 Union ministries and departments, The Hindu has learnt.
Published – March 9, 2026 11:14 PM IST
