The UPA government’s ambitious plan to reform higher education in the country has been delayed further and faces an uphill task for survival even as several important bills are stuck at various stages in Parliament.
The Union human resources development ministry has been unable to get through even a single bill during the Winter Session which concluded last week.
With its failure to get through these bills in the recently-concluded Winter Session, sources said that HRD minister Kapil Sibal is now likely to engage in another round of consultation with MPs to ensure that these bills are passed in the Budget Session of Parliament.
Several important bills like the Educational Tribunals Bill, Foreign Education Institutions (Regulation of Entry and Operations) Bill, 2010, the high-profile National Academic Depository (Amendment) Bill, 2011, and the National Council for Higher Education and Research, 2011 are still pending before Parliament. Almost a dozen bills related to the HRD ministry are pending before Parliament.
These important legislations have been pending despite the fact that Mr Sibal had worked overtime to placate Congress MPs and Opposition members. Sources pointed out that Mr Sibal had conducted several meetings with MPs to ensure that their queries regarding various pending bills were resolved.
It is understood that currently there are about 12 bills that are at various stages of legislative and consultation process in Parliament and the delay in their clearance has pushed the educational reform agenda back by several years.
Several of these bills had come under sharp attack from the Opposition and ruling party members ever since they were first introduced in the 2010 Monsoon Session of Parliament.
The HRD ministry had introduced an important bill, the National Council for Higher Education and Research (NCHER) Bill, 2011 during the last session. The NCHER bill aims at creating an overarching body for higher education regulation in the country and had faced stiff opposition from the health ministry, forcing the ministry to drop health education from its ambit.