HECI Bill 2025 gets Cabinet approval, renamed Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhikshan

The union cabinet on Friday cleared a bill that, if enacted into law, will set up an overarching higher education regulator, replacing the University Grants Commission (UGC), All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) and National Council for Teacher Education. Earlier known as the Higher Education Commission of India bill – HECI Bill 2025 – it has been renamed Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhikshan Bill, say reports.

A single higher education regular has been recommended by several committees over the years but most recently, in the National Education Policy (NEP 2020). The HECI Bill 2025 was listed for introduction in the ongoing winter session of parliament. "The bill to set up Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhikshan has been approved by the Cabinet," an official told the Press Trust of India.

HECI Bill 2025: Funding stays out

As reported earlier in Academia360, the new body will have three functions – regulation, accreditation and setting learning outcomes or professional standards. As the draft bill stands now, the proposed regulator will not have the funding powers of the bodies it seeks to replace. The UGC regulates non-technical higher education; the AICTE, technical education; and the NCTE, teacher education. Both UGC and AICTE have funding functions. Medical and law schools – overseen by the National Medical Commission (NMC) and Bar Council of India (BCI), respectively – will continue to be regulated separately.

The PTI report confirms that funding powers will be with the “administrative ministry”. A previous iteration of the Bill, drafted in 2018, had met with stiff resistance from the teaching and research communities over this. And they continue to oppose it. Over the past week, teachers met multiple members of parliament (MP) urging them to block the introduction of the new Bill – which has not been put in the public domain for discussion – in parliament and seek a review. Kerala’s John Brittas and Bihar’s Rajaram Singh have written to the minister for parliamentary affairs, Kiren Rijiju to postpone the introduction until a committee has reviewed the bill.

Even before the start of the winter session of parliament, member of the opposition and chairman of the parliamentary standing committee on education, women, children, youth and sports wrote to education minister Dharmendra Pradhan, asking him to send the HECI Bill 2025 to the committee first.