Nirbhaya convicts to be executed in Jail No 3; Tihar to seek services of Meerut hangman
New Delhi: The four convicts in the Nirbhaya gangrape case will be executed in Jail No 3, a senior Tihar Jail official said on Tuesday, hours after a Delhi court issued death warrants against them and declared that they will be hanged at 7 am on January 22.
Three of the convicts are lodged in Jail No 2, while one is in Jail No 4, the official said.
Sources said the jail authorities will approach the Uttar Pradesh prison authority asking for a hangman from Meerut to carry out the executions.
The four convicts -- Mukesh (32), Pawan Gupta (25), Vinay Sharma (26) and Akshay Kumar Singh (31) -- will be kept in isolated cells and will not be allowed to interact with other prisoners. Their family members, however, can visit them any time, the official said.
The safety of the convicts will be taken care of by the prison authorities and doctors will conduct regular check-ups to keep a check on their physical and mental health, he added.
According to the official, the four will be executed in Jail No 3 and the ropes which will be used for hanging them will be brought from Bihar.
He said the prison authorities are waiting to receive the court order. Asked if the four would be hanged together, he said "it is possible".
Nirbhaya, a 23-year-old paramedic student, was gangraped and brutalised on the intervening night of December 16-17, 2012, inside a moving bus in south Delhi by the four men, including two others, before being dumped on the road.
She died on December 29, 2012, at Mount Elizabeth Hospital in Singapore.
Of the six persons convicted, one allegedly committed suicide in jail and another, a juvenile, was released from a reformation home after serving a three-year term.
Mukesh, Pawan, Vinay and Akshay can still move a curative petition before the top court.
With no hangman in Tihar, the sources said, the Tihar authorities will again write to the prison authority of neighbouring Uttar Pradesh to provide a hangman.
"We had earlier written to the prison authority of Uttar Pradesh seeking services of a hangman from Meerut. Now that the death warrant has been issued, we will be writing to the prison authority again, seeking the services of a hangman," they said.
When contacted, Jail Superintendent of Meerut prison V P Pandey said he has not received any letter for sending a hangman for carrying out the executions.
"Last month, we got a letter to keep Pawan Jallad ready but there is no fresh communication. The Delhi court warrants were issued only this evening, maybe we will get the letter for sending him tomorrow (Tuesday)," he said.
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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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