Here’s how Muslim candidates fared in West Bengal Elections; Detailed report
41 of 42 Mamata’s Muslim candidates won, but overall Muslim numbers in state assembly declines
Kolkata: The number of Muslim MLAs in the newly-elected 292-member West Bengal assembly is on a constant decline since the 2011 state elections even as 41 of 42 Muslim candidates fielded by Mamata Banerjee’s TMC emerged victorious in the new assembly.
In the 2011 assembly election, 59 Muslim candidates marched into the state assembly while the numbers dipped down to 56 in 2016. In 2021, when 41 Muslim candidates of TMC alone emerged victorious in the polls, the overall numbers remained a meagre 42.
Rashtriya Secular Majlis Party (RSMP) candidate Md. Nawsad Siddique is the lone Muslim MLA to walk into the WB assembly who does not belong to Mamata Banerjee’s party.
TMC contested on all of 292 constituencies that went to the polls (Bypolls will be held on two constituencies later) and won 213 seats to retain the power for the third consecutive term of CM Mamata Banerjee. They had fielded Muslim candidates of 42 seats, all of them but one candidate made it to the assembly.
Among Mamata’s 41 Muslim MLAs is Humayun Kabir, the police commissioner Chandannagar near Kolkata who had quit the police force and joined the politics a few months before the election.
The BJP on the other hand won a total of 77 seats but none of them is a Muslim.
Congress and CPI-M, however, failed to register win on even one seat let alone Muslim candidate in the election, in what has been their worst electoral show in the state.
Asaduddin Owaisi’s AIMIM fielded 5 candidates in the election and none of them could win any seat for the party.
Indian Secular Front (ISF) of Abbas Siddiqui had fielded candidates in 26 seats but could not manage to win any seats.
The only positive for the Muslim community from the WB election is the winning percentage of TMC's Muslim candidates despite the communal politics triggered by the right-wing to steer elections into their favor, but the community will surely look for answers when it comes to the declining overall numbers of its candidates in the 294-member assembly of the state.
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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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