Telangana may head for early polls, key cabinet meet on Sunday
Hyderabad, Sep 1 : Telangana may be heading for an early polls as all eyes are on a crucial state cabinet meeting followed by a massive public meeting by the ruling TRS here on Sunday.
Amid strong indications of polls being advanced, Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) is all set to hold a massive show of strength.
The rally will be preceded by a meeting of the state cabinet, which is likely to decide for dissolution of Assembly, seven months ahead of its term.
TRS leaders said Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao will take "key decisions" at the cabinet meeting and announce them at the public meeting.
The cabinet may pass a resolution to dissolve the Assembly and recommend this to Governor E.S.L. Narasimhan. If the Election Commission agrees, the polls may be held in December along with the elections in three other states --Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh.
The state cabinet will meet at 1 p.m. while the public meeting is scheduled to begin an hour later.
For the last few weeks, Rao had been dropping hints of assembly elections being advanced. He has already declared that the party will announce the candidates in September.
KCR, as Rao is popularly known, is keen to advance the assembly polls to avoid simultaneous elections to the Assembly and the Parliament.
His two meetings with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in August further added to the speculation. Over the last few days, he announced sops for various sections of people and also transferred IAS and IPS officers.
On Saturday, the Chief Minister announced 35 per cent pay hike for the employees of electricity department.
KCR's son and cabinet minister K.T. Rama Rao said the Chief Minister would take a final decision on early polls. Rama Rao, who is number two in the party and the government, is confident of TRS retaining power whenever the elections are held.
Titled "Pragati Nivedana" (Progress report), the meeting to be held at Kongara Kalan at Ibrahimpatnam on the city outskirts is expected to attract 25 lakh people. Rama Rao claims that this will be the biggest political rally in the country.
According to him, TRS has 47 lakh members and if half of them turn up, the meet would be a huge success. TRS leaders are mobilising people for the meet from across the state.
TRS, which formed the first government in Telangana after the state came into being on June 2, 2014 with the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh, will highlight its achievements during the last four years while KCR is expected to sound the poll bugle.
TRS workers from various parts of state started pouring in for the meeting.
The massive mobilisation of people is expected to hit the traffic on Outer Ring Road (ORR) as thousands of vehicles will be heading towards the venue from different entry points along ORR. Rama Rao has suggested to people not attending the meeting to stay indoors.
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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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