3 months after return to IAS, Shah Faesal appointed as deputy secretary in Union tourism ministry
New Delhi, Aug 13: IAS officer Shah Faesal, who had a brief stint in politics, has been posted as a deputy secretary in the union tourism ministry over three months after being reinstated, officials said on Saturday.
The order on the posting of 2010-batch IAS officer from erstwhile Jammu and Kashmir cadre was cleared earlier this week.
He was reinstated in the last week of April after the government accepted his application for withdrawing his resignation.
Faesal could not be reached for a comment through calls or messages.
Faesal, who was the first Indian Administrative Service exam topper from Jammu and Kashmir, had earlier this year dropped hints about his return to the government service when he sent out a series of tweets speaking about his idealism letting him down in 2019 when he had resigned.
He had said, "8 months of my life (Jan 2019-Aug 2019) created so much baggage that I was almost finished. While chasing a chimera, I lost almost everything that I had built over the years. Job, Friends, Reputation, Public goodwill. But I never lost hope. My idealism had let me down," he had said.
"But I had faith in myself. That I would undo the mistakes I had made. That life would give me another chance. A part of me is exhausted with the memory of those 8 months and wants to erase that legacy. Much of it is already gone. Time will mop off the rest in believe," he had tweeted.
"Just thought of sharing that life is beautiful. It is always worth giving ourselves another chance. Setbacks make us stronger. And there is an amazing world beyond the shadows of the past. I turn 39 next month. And I'm really excited to start all over again," he tweeted in April this year.
Faesal, who had submitted his resignation in January 2019 and floated the Jammu and Kashmir People's Movement (JKPM) party, was detained under the stringent Public Safety Act immediately after the abrogation of the special status of the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir.
However, after his release, Faesal gave up on politics and gave indications he was willing to rejoin government service. His resignation had not been accepted.
The doctor-turned-bureaucrat formed his party to "revive democratic politics" in Jammu and Kashmir but his political career ended abruptly.
The home ministry, which is the cadre controlling authority for the Arunachal Pradesh-Goa-Mizoram and Union Territory (AGMUT) cadre, had asked for an opinion of the Jammu and Kashmir administration about his plea for withdrawing his resignation.
Hailing from the remote village of Lolab in north Kashmir, Faesal, whose father was killed by terrorists in 2002, had topped the UPSC examination in 2009.
Faesal was vocal about the "unprecedented curbs" on the people of Jammu and Kashmir after the abrogation of the operative provisions of Article 370.
He was detained at Delhi airport on the intervening night of August 14-15, 2019, and sent back to Srinagar and placed under detention.
After spending six months in preventive detention, first at the Sher-e-Kashmir International Conference Centre (SKICC) and then at Srinagar's MLA hostel, he was booked under the draconian Public Safety Act in February 2020 which was revoked four months later.
In an interview with PTI in 2020, Faesal had said his decision to join politics had done more harm than benefit as his "innocuous act" of dissent was seen as an "act of treason".
About his decision to form a political party, Faesal had said he wanted to revive democratic politics in Jammu and Kashmir.
"But soon after quitting (IAS), I realised that my innocuous act of dissent was being seen as an act of treason. It had done more harm than benefit," he had said, adding his act had discouraged a lot of civil services aspirants and his colleagues felt betrayed by him. "It upset me a lot."
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Single higher education regulator bill tabled in LS; Oppn flags ‘centralisation,' JPC likely
New Delhi: A bill to set up a 13-member body to regulate institutions of higher education was introduced in the Lok Sabha on Monday.
Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan introduced the Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan Bill, which seeks to establish an overarching higher education commission along with three councils for regulation, accreditation, and ensuring academic standards for universities and higher education institutions in India.
Meanwhile, the move drew strong opposition, with members warning that it could weaken institutional autonomy and result in excessive centralisation of higher education in India.
The Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan Bill, 2025, earlier known as the Higher Education Council of India (HECI) Bill, has been introduced in line with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020.
The proposed legislation seeks to merge three existing regulatory bodies, the University Grants Commission (UGC), the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), and the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE), into a single unified body called the Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan.
At present, the UGC regulates non-technical higher education institutions, the AICTE oversees technical education, and the NCTE governs teacher education in India.
Under the proposed framework, the new commission will function through three separate councils responsible for regulation, accreditation, and the maintenance of academic standards across universities and higher education institutions in the country.
According to the Bill, the present challenges faced by higher educational institutions due to the multiplicity of regulators having non-harmonised regulatory approval protocols will be done away with.
The higher education commission, which will be headed by a chairperson appointed by the President of India, will cover all central universities and colleges under it, institutes of national importance functioning under the administrative purview of the Ministry of Education, including IITs, NITs, IISc, IISERs, IIMs, and IIITs.
At present, IITs and IIMs are not regulated by the University Grants Commission (UGC).
Government to refer bill to JPC; Oppn slams it
The government has expressed its willingness to refer it to a joint committee after several members of the Lok Sabha expressed strong opposition to the Bill, stating that they were not given time to study its provisions.
Responding to the opposition, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju said the government intends to refer the Bill to a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) for detailed examination.
Congress Lok Sabha MP Manish Tewari warned that the Bill could result in “excessive centralisation” of higher education. He argued that the proposed law violates the constitutional division of legislative powers between the Union and the states.
According to him, the Bill goes beyond setting academic standards and intrudes into areas such as administration, affiliation, and the establishment and closure of university campuses. These matters, he said, fall under Entry 25 of the Concurrent List and Entry 32 of the State List, which cover the incorporation and regulation of state universities.
Tewari further stated that the Bill suffers from “excessive delegation of legislative power” to the proposed commission. He pointed out that crucial aspects such as accreditation frameworks, degree-granting powers, penalties, institutional autonomy, and even the supersession of institutions are left to be decided through rules, regulations, and executive directions. He argued that this amounts to a violation of established constitutional principles governing delegated legislation.
Under the Bill, the regulatory council will have the power to impose heavy penalties on higher education institutions for violating provisions of the Act or related rules. Penalties range from ₹10 lakh to ₹75 lakh for repeated violations, while establishing an institution without approval from the commission or the state government could attract a fine of up to ₹2 crore.
Concerns were also raised by members from southern states over the Hindi nomenclature of the Bill. N.K. Premachandran, an MP from the Revolutionary Socialist Party representing Kollam in Kerala, said even the name of the Bill was difficult to pronounce.
He pointed out that under Article 348 of the Constitution, the text of any Bill introduced in Parliament must be in English unless Parliament decides otherwise.
DMK MP T.M. Selvaganapathy also criticised the government for naming laws and schemes only in Hindi. He said the Constitution clearly mandates that the nomenclature of a Bill should be in English so that citizens across the country can understand its intent.
Congress MP S. Jothimani from Tamil Nadu’s Karur constituency described the Bill as another attempt to impose Hindi and termed it “an attack on federalism.”
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