Mayank Agarwal smashes career-best 243, India 493/6 at stumps
Indore, Nov 15: Opener Mayank Agarwal grinded a below-par Bangladesh bowling unit with a career-best second double hundred as India buried the visitors under a deluge of runs on the second day of the opening Test here on Friday.
Agarwal's third Test hundred, 243 off 330 balls, formed the cornerstone of India's 493 for 6, which gave the home side a sizeable lead of 343 runs.
Friday solely belonged to Agarwal, who in this particular innings, managed to overshadow a batting line-up that has Rohit Sharma (6), Cheteshwar Pujara (54 off 72 balls), skipper Virat Kohli (0) and Ajinkya Rahane (86 off 172 balls) in its ranks.
Agarwal's partnership of 91 for the second wicket with Pujara and 190 for the fourth wicket with Rahane were however important in the context of the Indian innings.
A whirlwind partnership of 123 in 23.5 overs with Ravindra Jadeja (60 batting) for the fifth wicket only added insult to injury for Bangladesh.
The match might be over inside three days if India declare overnight.
Bangladesh's brittle batting line-up may not have the mental capacity to withstand India's pace barrage if first innings was any indicator.
For Agarwal, his voracious appetite for runs, carefully cultivated through solid performances at the domestic and India 'A' level, is paying dividends.
Exactly one year ago, Agarwal was in the fringe, scoring those "Daddy Hundreds" but lost out to the prodigious talent of Prithvi Shaw, who was given preference and a headstart at the international arena.
Destiny, however, had other plans as Shaw got injured and also lost a bit of focus. That was the opening Agarwal was looking for and he is showing with each innings that he is not going anywhere too soon.
The Shubman Gills and the Shaws may have to wait a wee bit longer.
Having scored those tough runs Down Under, Agarwal has now earned the right to consolidate his place with some heavy duty scoring. And he is doing that exactly.
It did help that Bangladesh got their bowling combination awfully wrong.
On a pitch, where someone with express pace and variation was needed, the visitors fielded two specialist spinners in left-arm orthodox Taijul Islam (0/120 in 28 overs) and off-spinner Mehidy Hasan Miraj (1/115 in 27 overs).
The spin duo was like lambs for slaughter as Agarwal went after them with all his might.
All the eight sixes that he hit came off the two spinners. This apart, he also hit 28 boundaries during his career-best international score.
The coveted double hundred came by lofting Miraj over long-on while the stand-out six was an inside out over extra cover off Taijul. Then there was one down the ground and a couple over long-off.
The spinners were either bowling too short or too full outside the off-stump. At one stage, Miraj, a former Bangladesh U-19 captain, completely lost confidence as he started coming round the wicket.
The negative field placement for an off-spinner -- a deep point for saving a cut shot and deep square leg for saving a pull-shot -- was a reflection of Bangladesh's approach.
Abu Jayed (4/108 in 25 overs) was the only bowler, who showed some heart getting the wickets of Pujara, Kohli and Rahane but his new ball Ebadot Hossain (1/115 in 31 overs) neither had pace nor the variation to trouble the Indian batsmen.
They attacked him at will and defended when they found it necessary.
The lack of pace also became a factor and the pitch on which Indian pacers looked menacing, Bangladesh's medium pacers merely went through the motions.
Each boundary left their shoulders dropping further and by the time Agarwal was out trying to hit his ninth six, the visitors had resigned to the fate that the remainder of this Test match will now be a mere formality.
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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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