Women shine at Smart India Hackathon at IIT Kharagpur
Kharagpur, June 22: Coimbatore's Whistling Cookers of Avinashilingam Deemed University for Women bagged a cash prize of Rs 1 lakh by winning the Smart India Hackathon 2018 - Hardware Edition on Friday.
The first runner-up was from the same college -- Team Buddies. And the second runner-up was Team Askurvara from the Silicon Institute of Technology.
The winner and runners-up were all women's team, a IIT Kharagpur release said.
The two runner-ups were richer by Rs 75,000 and Rs 50,000 respectively.
SIH2018 - Hardware edition is the first-of-its-kind innovation challenge initiated by the Union Human Resource Development to provide a national platform to young technical minds of India to showcase their disruptive innovations and creative products which can bring about revolutionary changes in crucial sectors like agriculture, health, clean water, waste management, automotive, smart communication, and education.
The event has seen unique student innovations in smart drip irrigation, technology-powered mechanical harvesters and soil testing, and cost-effective detection of the status of fruits and vegetables.
The winning team designed a prototype for "non-destructive estimation of sugar content of fruits using visible-light imaging".
Prof. Partha Pratim Chakrabarti, Director, IIT Kharagpur and Chairman, SIH2018, said: "I think innovation challenges such as SIH2018 are going to bring a new era in innovation and transform the process by which we teach engineering."
The nine competing teams at IIT Kharagpur were judged by an external jury made up of some of the top entrepreneurs and partners of leading business incubators in the agri-tech sector, such as a-IDEA, Omnivore, AgNext, Bharat Innovations Fund and Ankur Capital.
Nine teams worked continuously for five consecutive days to build their hardware solutions as a working prototype.
Said Pranav Gawande and Chirag Patil of Team Scrap Stars of G.H. Raisoni College of Engineering, Nagpur, who devised a sugarcane cutting machine: "The competition was stiff as all the teams had great potential. Irrespective of the result, it was great to be in IIT Kharagpur."
M. Charugayathri of Team Buddies, one of the two all-women teams from Avinashilingam Deemed University for Women, Tamil Nadu, said: "Making it to the finals itself was a great experience."
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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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