BHUBANESWAR: Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan has urged his cabinet colleague Education Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank to repeal the Odisha Universities (Amendment) Bill, 2020, which was recently passed by Odisha Government in the just concluded Monsoon session of the Assembly.
Writing to Pokhriyal for the second time on the controversial Bill, Pradhan said, “The Bill seeks to strip away the autonomy of higher educational institutions in Odisha by bureaucratising critical aspects of functioning of universities and crippling its autonomy with the intent of exercising the State Government’s complete dominance.”
Dubbing the Bill as ab initio ultra vires to provisions of the Constitution, Pradhan said the impugned legislation has been passed by the State Legislature under entry 25 of the Concurrent List to the 7th Schedule of the Constitution.
“This entry is subject to entry 66 of the Union List, under which the Parliament has exclusive powers to make laws in relation to coordination and determination or standards in institutions for higher education or research. Therefore, guidelines and regulations issued under the UGC Act, 1956 and universities in Odisha recognised by the UGC under section 12 (b) of the Act are bound by the extant UGC provisions,” the letter said.
He argued that the ‘outsourcing’ of university appointments promulgated under the Bill is in blatant violation of provisions under Section 26 of UGC Act.
Pradhan said, “The pernicious provisions for replacing university’s apex Senate body with the State-controlled Syndicate, manipulating the appointment or its university vice-chancellor by inserting a State Government-appointed nominee in the search committee and limiting candidature of this committee to non-academic candidates are cause for grave concern.”
The Bill also seeks to unethically bypass the Constitutional scrutiny and debates on utilisation of public funds by withdrawing the tabling of university audit report in the State Assembly.
“This measure has not only been called out for being draconian, regressive and incongruous with higher education reforms anywhere in India but also grossly undermines the basic principles of public accountability,” Pradhan said.
The Bill is also in complete contradiction to PM’s visionary National Education Policy 2020, he added.