Mangaluru: Maddur man finds his mother, lost 14 years ago, at nursing home in Kulshekhara
Mangaluru: White Doves Psychiatric Nursing and Destitute Home in Kulshekhara was witness to another heartwarming moment on Sunday. A mother, who was separated from her children for last 14 years due to her mental illness, was finally reunited with them.
In 2009, Corrine Antoinette Rasquinha, the founder of White Doves, received information about a mentally ill woman who was in the streets of Mangaluru. She brought the sick woman to her nursing home and provided necessary psychiatric treatment. Despite all her earnest attempts, Rasquinha could not find much about the mysterious woman, as is normal in many such cases. Farzana, the sick lady, could only say that she was from Maddur and her house was near a butcher's shop.
As there are lot of places with similar name, Rasquinha and her dedicated team at White Doves couldn't really locate the village or the family of Farzana. Despite the lack of clarity, the institution had sent people to different locations to find the woman's family. All attempts were in wain, until 2024.
After 14 years, Farzana was finally found by her family in Maddur of Mandya district. Asif, her son, got to know that his mother was at a nursing home through an acquaintance. Along with his wife and children, he came to Mangaluru to take his mother home.
Asif said that the family members had kept up their search to locate his mother for many years. When Farzana disappeared in 2009, Asif and his sister were very young. "My sister hadn't seen my mother at all. Now we are very happy that we have got her back", Asif told Vartha Bharati.
"We found Farzana in 2009. She couldn't give us any proper information then. We had lost all hopes about her going back. Two weeks ago, we reunited a woman from Maddur in Mandya with her family. We had informed them about Farzana. With their kind help, we could now reach Farzana's family", Corrine Antoinette Rasquinha said.
When she left home 14 years ago, Farzana was a young mother with two small kids. Today, she has aged prematurely and her kids are all grown up; they are married and have kids themselves. When Farzana, unable to identify her adult son, drew his three year old son into an embrace, mistaking him for his father, there were a lot of moist eyes around. Now she has set sail to her long lost home with a family that has vowed never to lose her again.
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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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