HECI Bill: Teachers, students oppose, meet non-BJP MPs for support

With the Higher Education Commission of India (HECI) Bill 2025 set to be tabled in Parliament, the Coordination Committee Against HECI – an umbrella organisation of more than 30 teacher and student organisations is meeting MPs to urge them to oppose the Bill or at least demand that it be sent to the Standing Committee. They said the government was rushing for a sweeping overhaul in India’s higher education landscape, without public scrutiny.

The Committee has so far met Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) MP Kanimozhi, Communist Party of India (Marxist) MP John Brittas, Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) MP Manoj Kumar Jha, Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation MP Dipankar Bhattacharya and Communist Party of India MP P Sandosh Kumar, and will be petitioning Parliamentarians from other Opposition parties.

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“We are approaching all the non-BJP parties for support, including TDP and JD(U) as the Bill is a serious assault on the federal character of higher education, especially the rights of the states. We are hopeful to get support from maximum quarters on this bill,” said Rudrashish Chakraborty, a teacher at the Delhi University (DU).

What is HECI Bill 2025, and why is it facing opposition?

The Higher Education Commission of India (HECI) Bill 2025, scheduled to be tabled in the ongoing Winter Session, proposes to overhaul India’s higher education regulatory structure by purportedly repealing the UGC (University Grants Commission) Act 1956, the AICTE (All India Council for Technical Education) Act 1987 and the NCTE (National Council for Teacher Education) Act 1993. Since the draft of the Bill is not available in the public domain, teachers and student groups say it is being pushed through without transparency or consultation.

“It is being rushed without taking any feedback. There has also been no discussion with students, teachers and higher educational institutions, the major stakeholders in the education system. Nor have the States been given enough time to fully discuss the implications of this Bill,” the Committee said in its letter to MPs.

If the draft HECI Bill has not been viewed by anyone, how are people saying it’s problematic?

That’s because of a previous draft made public in 2018, which received numerous negative responses before being shelved. The academic community fears that many contentious provisions of that Bill remain. These include delinking funding from regulation, which they warn will make public funding “bureaucratic, arbitrary, and subject to political considerations”, and a highly centralised Commission in which “10 out of the 12 members” were central government officials, with minimal representation for teachers and none for marginalised communities.

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“The HECI Bill takes away the financial powers of the University Grants Commission, and the proposal is to make the Ministry of Education (MoE) or another Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) responsible for disbursing grants… By delinking the function of policy-making from the allocation of financial resources, the proposed Bill will use ‘public funding’ as a reward or punishment for ideological loyalties. It will also heighten hierarchies between different tiers of institutions (Central and state, general and professional, scientific and technical, research and vocational, metropolitan and rural),” the Committee said in its letter.

“The composition of the HECI (in the Draft Bill) signals a takeover of higher education by the officials of the Central government. 10 out of the 12 members of the Commission are either officers of the Central government or those appointed to various offices by it. Teachers are reduced to just two in number, which is absolutely unacceptable in a body that is to determine the standards and quality of higher education in the country. The composition of the Commission does not also reflect the diversity of the country and gives no representation to marginalised groups like SCs, STs, OBCs, women, transpersons, persons with disabilities, and minorities,” it added.

What experts said

Experts say the draft of the 2018 HECI Bill, if implemented, will also be a threat to the principle of federalism.

“The earlier HECI draft put all authority in the hands of a centrally dominated Commission with no state presence, yet it would govern state universities too. When decisions on funding, research and even closing institutions are taken without states at the table, it fundamentally erodes their constitutional role. That’s why we say the Bill threatens federalism… Last time, the Tamil Nadu government was one of the key opposers to the Bill,” said Nandita Narain, former president of the DU Teachers’ Association.

How would Bill impact universities, states, students?

Critics say the regulatory framework could allow the HECI to grant or revoke authorisation, impose graded autonomy or even order closures, creating a system marked by surveillance, fee hikes, job insecurity and privatisation. They argue that it threatens to close already under-resourced institutions by labelling them “underperforming.” With universities still struggling under NEP 2020, they warn that “the introduction of another disastrous reform move… will be the last nail in the coffin of Indian higher education.”

What are stakeholders demanding?

Teachers’ bodies, student unions and even MPs argue that a reform of this scale must undergo public debate and federal consultation because education is a subject in the Concurrent List. Rajya Sabha MP John Brittas, in a letter to the Union Education Minister on December 8, said he was writing with a “profound sense of responsibility and deep concern”, and urged the government not to “proceed with the immediate introduction” of the Bill, and insisted that if introduced, it must be scrutinised by a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC).

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“Higher education in India is not merely an administrative domain; it forms the intellectual bedrock upon which our democracy, scientific progress, social justice, and national unity firmly stand. Any structural reordering of this magnitude must, therefore, proceed only after exhaustive consultation, transparent debate, and broad-based federal consensus. It is a matter of concern that the draft Bill has not yet been placed in the public domain, nor have State Governments, universities, teachers’ bodies, students’ organisations, or other stake holders been meaningfully consulted,” he wrote.

“At a time when universities across the country are already grappling with the cascading disruptions associated with the implementation of the National Education Policy, 2020 – ranging from altered curricula and delayed admissions to shrinking research support and contractualisation of faculty – the introduction of yet another centralised reform is widely apprehended to further deepen the ongoing crisis in Indian higher education,” Brittas added.

Teachers and student bodies have urged MPs across parties to oppose the Bill’s introduction and demand that it be sent to a Standing Committee for wider consultation.

“We hope that you will represent our considered opinion before Parliament, and speak in the debate against the Bill. We also request you to ask for the Bill to be referred to the Standing Committee so that teachers, students, and educationists are given enough opportunity to present their case,” the Committee wrote.