Ex-Union minister Narendra Singh Tomar elected speaker of MP assembly
Bhopal (PTI): Senior BJP leader and former Union minister Narendra Singh Tomar was on Wednesday unanimously elected as the speaker of the Madhya Pradesh legislative assembly.
The first session of the newly-elected assembly began on Monday.
Chief Minister Mohan Yadav on Wednesday moved a proposal for the election of 66-year-old Tomar as the speaker which was seconded by leader of opposition Umang Singhar.
Former Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan also moved a proposal for the election of Tomar as the speaker which was seconded by ex-Union minister Prahlad Patel, who recently won from Narsinghpur assembly seat in the state.
Five more proposals, including by opposition Congress MLAs Ajay Singh, Jaivardhan Singh and Rajendra Kumar Singh, were also moved in favour of Tomar.
After the voice vote, pro-tem speaker Gopal Bhargava declared Tomar as elected unanimously to the speaker's post.
Tomar filed his nomination for the speaker's post on Monday with the support of the opposition Congress.
Chief Minister Mohan Yadav on Wednesday congratulated Tomar and also thanked the opposition for unanimously electing the speaker.
Yadav said Tomar has been equally popular among the ruling and opposition leaders.
LoP Singhar, ex-CM Chouhan and other leaders also congratulated Tomar.
Tomar, who got his first electoral victory as a corporator in Gwalior in 1983, was elected from Dimani assembly seat of Morena district in the recently concluded state elections.
He held different posts, including state president of the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha and later state chief of the BJP.
In 1998, Tomar entered the state assembly after winning from Gwalior seat.
Tomar was again elected from the same seat in 2003. He then became a cabinet minister in the BJP-led state government.
For a brief period in 2009, Tomar was elected to the Rajya Sabha from the state. Later in the same year, he was elected to the Lok Sabha from Morena seat.
In the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, Tomar was elected on the BJP ticket from Gwalior parliamentary seat and became Union cabinet minister in the Narendra Modi government.
Tomar's seat was changed in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections when he successfully contested from Morena and retained ministerial berth at the Centre.
On December 3, the ruling BJP recorded a thumping victory in Madhya Pradesh by winning 163 seats in the 230-member assembly. The Congress, which had bagged 114 seats in 2018, won just 66 segments, while Bharat Adivasi Party candidate Kamleshwar Dodiyar pocketed the Sailana constituency.
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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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