Bengaluru teen triumphs at National racing C'ship
Chennai, Sep 8 : Sohil Shah, a 17-year-old schoolboy from Bengaluru, scripted a fairytale finish to his debut season by emerging the champion in the highly competitive Formula LGB 1300 category in the MRF MMSC fmsci Indian National Racing Championship here on Saturday.
Joining Sohil as a National champion was Prabhu AS (Arka Motorsports) from Namakkal, who took the title in the Indian Junior Touring Cars class.
In the decisive final race today, Prabhu had finished second behind his title rival Chrys D'Souza (Unimek Racing) from Goa but the latter was docked a 30-second penalty for causing a collision, which pushed him to second, while Surat's Nikunj Vagh (Team N1) was elevated to third spot.
Prabhu finished the championship with 103.5 points to D'Souza's 95.5.
Meanwhile, Raghul Rangasamy moved a step closer to his dream of winning the MRF F1600 championship as he finished second behind Mumbai's Nayan Chatterjee and took his tally of points to 152 which put him 14 clear of Goutham Parekh who finished third in the race.
The Championship, whose winner becomes eligible to participate in the Mazda Road To Indy Shootout in the United States later this year, will be decided on Sunday when two more races are run with a maximum of 50 points available.
Later, Arjun Balu (Race Concepts) moved within 13 points of leader Ashish Ramaswamy (Arka Motorsports) from Bengaluru by winning the premier Indian Touring Cars class race with surprising ease.
Balu, hailing from Coimbatore and returning to racing after a five-year break, made capital of his pole position start to win by nearly 13 seconds with Ramaswamy finishing second after getting past team-mate Arjun Narendran who slowed down considerably in the last lap due to handling issues, as he put it.
It meant, going into Sunday's last race, Ramaswamy leads Balu 149-136 with 25 points on offer.
Sohil (M Sport) finished second in the race behind Balaprasath (DTS Racing) but the 18 points he thus earned saw him finish on top in the category with 154 points, just four clear of Chennai's 19-year old Ashwin Datta (Momentum Motorsport) in the final championship standings.
Sohil, who led Ashwin 136-135 after Friday's Race 1, made sure he finished ahead of his rival in Saturday's outing to secure the championship.
"This is my first season in a National Championship and to win a title, it feels fantastic. In Saturday's race, I knew I had to finish in front of Ashwin (Datta) to seal the championship, but it was tough," said Sohil, a 12th standard student of Delhi Public School, Bengaluru.
"I had some issues with the engine and Ashwin was catching up with me, but I managed to stay in front," he added.
The MRF F1600 race saw Chatterjee off to a good start and gradually pulling away from the chasing pack. Through the eight laps of the race, Chatterjee maintained steady pace to won by a handsome margin, while Rangasamy, with an eye on the championship, was content to come in second ahead of his arch-rival Parekh.
Three Indian entries, B Vijayakumar (Coimbatore), Vicky Chandhok and MR Dastur, both from Chennai, qualified in that order for Sunday's Race 1 in the Caterham 7 Asia Zonal Championship double-header while a fourth home driver, Kasha Sai (Salem) took the sixth spot on the grid.
Sandwiched between the home entrants were Sri Lankans Sheran Fernando and Andrew Jude Choksy.
Incidentally, it was the maiden drive in the Caterham cars for Vijayakumar, Dastur and Sai while Chandhok had two podium finishes in the previous round last weekend.
Meanwhile, France's Alessandro Ghiretti, winner of two of the three races last weekend, warmed up for Sunday's triple-header in the Formula 4 South-East Championship by grabbing pole position ahead of Muizz Musyaffa (Malaysia) and Kane Shepherd (UK).
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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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