Gauri Lankesh's sister to oppose CBI probe
Bengaluru, Dec 27 : Slain journalist-activist Gauri Lankesh'ssister Kavitha Lankesh Thursday came out against any move to handover the probe in the case to the CBI, saying the Special Investigation Team of the Karnataka police had made a lot of progress, arresting 16 suspects.
Kavitha said if the state government agreed to the CBI probe, she would seek to implead herself in the matter in the Supreme Court and oppose it.
Her comments come in the backdrop of the apex court recently favouring CBI probe into the murders of Gauri Lankesh, rationalist M M Kalburgi and social activist Govind Pansare if there was a "common thread" in these incidents which occurred over the last five years.
"The SIT led by IG B K Singh and investigation officer M N Anucheth did a brilliant work byarresting the accused in the case. It filed two charge sheetsalso. When there is so much headway, it does not make anysense to hand over the case to CBI," she told PTI here.
However, Kalburgi's son Sreevijaya said he was having faith in judiciary and whatever it did will be in the best interest of his family.
"We will go by whatever judiciary feels good. At the end of the day we want justice in the case," he said.
On December 11, a bench of justices U U Lalit and Navin Sinha of the Supreme Court had asked the CBI, already probing the killing of social activist Narendra Dabholkar, to inform it by January first week whether it would like to investigate the three other cases also.
It observed that one probe agency should investigate all the four cases, if prima facie it appears that there is a "common thread" in the murders.
Earlier, the Karnataka police in its status report told the top court that there appears to be an "intimate connection" between the murders of Kalburgi in 2015 and Gauri Lankesh in 2017.
Gauri Lankesh was shot dead in front of her house here on September 5, 2017 and the SIT has so far arrested 16 people for their alleged involvement in the killing while two others are still at large.
Some of the people arrested in the case are allegedly linked to Sanatan Sanstha and its allied outfit Hindu Janajagruti Samiti.
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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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