Will examine veracity of evidence against five rights activists: SC
New Delhi, Sep 17 : The Supreme Court on Monday said it will examine the veracity of material gathered by police against five rights activists arrested on charges of links with the outlawed Communist Party of India-Maoist.
Ordering the matter to be heard on Wednesday, a bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices A.M. Khanwilkar and D.Y. Chandrachud said: "First of all, we must look into the material. We will see the record, what are the allegations, and see if there is something real. We will quash if it is a cooked-up or clumsy story."
The court told the senior counsel Abhishek Manu Singhvi: "We are protecting your liberty... your formulation on law, we will hear you on Wednesday."
In the course of the hearing, Chief Justice Misra said: "The best way to deal with it (is that) the interim order (of house arrest) will remain. All the cases will be transferred to one court."
However, this course of action was lost as the hearing took a different turn in the course of arguments by Singhvi.
The hearing saw the Centre opposing a plea by historian Romila Thapar and activist Maja Daruwala against the arrests by contending that Naxalism was not just a problem bedeviling one state but also other states in the country.
Citing the procedure and asserting that the matter be heard by a competent court, Additional Solicitor General Maninder Singh said that if it did not happen every matter may start coming to the top court.
Earlier, Additional Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for Maharashtra, told the court that he will show the material to demonstrate that the five accused -- Sudha Bhardwaj, Varavara Rao, Gautam Navlakha, Vernon Gonsalves, Arun Ferreira -- were arrested not for airing dissent but for "activities prejudicial to the interest of the State".
As the apex court said that it will examine the veracity of the material, Mehta said that five accused can't say thereafter that they have a (judicial) remedy.
"They can't have two remedies. Let them withdraw their respective pleas before different courts, they can't have two remedies."
Singhvi informed the court that nothing had happened in those petition, ever since the matter came before the top court and that hearings on them have been deferred.
Mehta reiterated his objection as to how could strangers -- Romila Thapar and Maja Daruwala -- petition the top court to challenge the arrests.
At this, CJI Misra said: "We are not concerned about the locus of the case. I have not even uttered these words."
Senior counsel Anand Grover asserted that "they (police) have not followed the procedure under the law".
Grover said that it was no more a case of strangers moving the court as two of the five accused have filed their affidavits in the court.
Pressing for an "independent and comprehensive inquiry", the petitioners' counsel Singhvi said that he wanted to show the court some of the shocking material relied upon by the Maharashtra Police to proceed against the five activists who were arrested on August 28.
The Chief Justice said they will have to move a separate petition for an independent probe.
Referring to two FIRs filed in the case (0 of 2018 and 4/2018), Singhvi said that a part of play by German playwright and poet Bertolt Brecht calling upon the people to rise for their rights -- that was used in Bhima-Koregaon event - is the foundation of an FIR.
He told the court about the volte face by the Maharashtra government, wherein in response to the first FIR (0 of 2018) they blamed activists of a right-wing outfit for violence on the peaceful Dalit procession at Bhima-Koregaon village but in the case of second FIR (4/2018) backtrack on it.
Singhvi said that after the Bhima-Koregoan violence on January 1, a committee had submitted its inquiry report. The Pune police did not accept it and later even disowned it.
Describing the evidence as "fabricated", Singhvi said that police had accused the five activist of receiving a letter from one Comrade Prakash, forgetting that he is lodged in jail after his conviction in a case.
Alleging that canard is being spread about the arrested activists, Singhvi said that in the 25 cases against poet Varavara Rao, he was either acquitted or the cases withdrawn or quashed.
In case of Vernon Gonsalves, he was acquitted in 17 of the 18 cases. In one case, an appeal is pending. Ferreira was acquitted in all 11 cases, the counsel 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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