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Draft Bill ready for establishing 16 more Central universities

NEW DELHI: The Union Human Resource Development Ministry is ready with a draft Bill for establishing 16 Central universities across the country as part of its university expansion programme to improve access to higher education.

The draft of the umbrella legislation that will govern all the new proposed Central universities — for the first time — has been sent to various Ministries for their comments. All Central universities so far have been established under different Acts. Once approved by the Cabinet, the draft Bill would in all likelihood be tabled in Parliament in the coming monsoon session.

As of now there are only 22 Central universities in the country with Delhi having as many as four while 16 States have none. The proposed universities are believed to have been modelled as unitary, non-affiliating universities on the pattern of the Jawaharlal Nehru and Hyderabad universities.

The non-affiliating universities confine themselves to their own campuses of teaching and research without having to be concerned about the colleges and institutions located outside of the campus.

The States identified for setting up these universities in the next five years at an estimated cost of Rs 5,000 crore in addition to the annual grants are Maharashtra, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Gujarat, Haryana, Rajasthan, Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Bihar, Orissa, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Jharkhand and Punjab. Last week during his one day visit to Jammu, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced one Central university for Jammu and Kashmir.

Dr. Singh’s initiative for improved university system came in June when he announced at least one Central university for each State and a degree college for every district following a meeting on higher education with Union Human Resource Development Minister Arjun Singh, Union Finance Minister P. Chidambaram, Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia and University Grants Commission chairman Sukhdeo Thorat.

The Prime Minister had said that each university should become a symbol of excellence, a model of efficiency and an example in terms of academic standards and university governance for other State universities to emulate. In the 350 districts, where the Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) was below the national average, Dr. Singh had asked the Centre to assist the States through the University Grants Commission (UGC) in setting up degree colleges to improve the enrolment ratio.

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