Draft bill for new varsities sent to HRD ministry

President Pratibha Devisingh Patil, in her speech, mentioned about developing a “brain gain” policy to attract talent from all over the world into the 14 universities proposed in the 11th plan to position them as “Innovation Universities”.

As a part of this repositioning, a Draft Bill has been sent to the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) to set up these universities based on a more liberal framework, based on the experiences of foreign universities. Moreover, these universities will cater to undergraduate, post graduate and Ph.D students.“We will move forward with the 14 worldclass universities and on the academic reforms front, there is a need to go ahead with the semester system and cramming should not be the basis of education. So, freedom of syllabi is required along with academic freedom by allowing the universities to innovate. The heart of all this is how to bring about innovation in the system and think out of the box to meet tomorrow’s needs,” Kapil Sibal, Union Minister of MHRD, told Business Standard.