Sania-Bopanna pair reaches Australian Open mixed doubles final
Melbourne(PTI): Playing the last Grand Slam tournament of her career, Sania Mirza earned the chance to win her seventh major title by reaching the Australian Open mixed doubles final with compatriot Rohan Bopanna here on Wednesday.
The unseeded Indian pair knocked out third seeds Desirae Krawczyk and Neal Skupski 7-6(5) 6-7(5) 10-6 in the semifinal that lasted one hour and 52 minutes.
After splitting a set each, the Indians raced to a commanding lead in the Super Tie-breaker. Sania found a stunning backhand winner to earn three match point and sealed the contest with a drive volley that Krawczyk could not return.
"It was an amazing match, there was a lot of nerves. It's my last slam and it's so special to play with Rohan. He was my first mixed doubles partner when I was 14 and today I'm 36 and he is 42 and we are still playing, we have a solid relationship," Sania said after the match.
Sania has announced that the WTA event in Dubai in February will be her swansong.
"We are excited to come back here and give ourselves another chance. We were playing the best mixed doubles pair on Tour and had to come up with the best," she said about the rival players from USA and England.
"I'm not a crier but I'm almost there right now, I feel the love for the last 18 years I have been coming here. It feels like home for me, I have a family here, I eat at home and I have so many Indians supporting me," said Sania, who won her first Grand Slam title at the Australian Open in 2009, winning the title with compatriot Mahesh Bhupathi.
She later won the women's doubles title at Melbourne Park in 2016 with Swiss great Martina Hingis.
The 42-year-old Bopanna, who won his only major title at the French Open, winning the mixed doubles with Canadian Gabriela Dabrowski, said seizing the momentum in tie break was crucial.
"As Sania mentioned it was a tough team we were playing against. It is not easy to keep the momentum going having lost that second set but we stayed strong and got an early lead and gave us that momentum," he said.
"Really happy to be sharing the court with Sania. (It's an) incredible journey, inspiring everyone back home and today so many fans here.
"One more to go. It would be an absolute dream (Sania winning the title). It can't get better than that. It will be special and we need it in India, keep inspiring everyone back there is the only way to keep it going."
Out of Sania's six Grand Slams title, three are mixed doubles trophies which she won with Mahesh Bhupathi (2009 Australian Open, 2012 French Open) and Brazilian Bruno Soares (2014 US Open).
All three women's doubles titles came with Swiss great Martina Hingis. (Wimbledon 2015, US Open 2015 and Australian Open 2016).
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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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