Afghan peace deal hits first snag over prisoner releases
Kabul: Afghanistan's president on Sunday said he will not free thousands of Taliban prisoners ahead of all-Afghan power-sharing talks set for next week, publicly disagreeing with a timetable for a speedy prisoner release laid out just a day earlier in a US-Taliban peace agreement.
President Ashraf Ghani's comments pointed to the first hitch in implementing the fragile deal, which is aimed at ending America's longest war after more than 18 years and getting rival Afghan factions to agree on their country's future.
Still, the US has said a planned US troop withdrawal over the next 14 months is linked to the Taliban's counter-terrorism performance, not to progress in intra-Afghan talks.
Washington's Peace Envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad, who served as America's first ambassador to Afghanistan after the 2001 U.S. invasion, spent the past 17 months running on-again, off-again talks with the Taliban to hammer out the agreement.
The US-Taliban deal signed on Saturday in the Middle Eastern State of Qatar envisions the release of up to 5,000 Taliban prisoners by the Afghan government ahead of talks between Afghan factions meant to begin March 10 in the Norwegian capital of Oslo. The Taliban would release up to 1,000 prisoners.
Ghani told a news conference in the Afghan capital of Kabul on Sunday that this wasn't a promise the United States could make. He said the release of any prisoners was a decision for his government to take and that he wasn't ready to release prisoners before the start of negotiations.
"The request has been made by the United States for the release of prisoners and it can be part of the negotiations but it cannot be a precondition," Ghani said.
The US-Taliban deal is seen as a historic opportunity to extricate the United States from Afghanistan, a nation convulsed by conflict since the Soviet invasion in December 1979. Yet it could also unravel quickly, particularly if the Taliban fail to deliver on a promise that no terror attacks would be launched from Afghan soil.
The intra-Afghan talks between squabbling political factions and rival Taliban in Afghanistan are even more intricate even if a potential failure might not slow the withdrawal of American forces.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Qatari Foreign Minister Mohammad bin Abdulrahman Al Thani said he considered a prisoner exchange an important confidence-building measure.
"Everything is interconnected," he said Sunday about the agreement's 14-month timeframe.
"The prisoner exchange will be one of the first confidence-building measures, so it will remain a very critical step that we need to push forward," he added.
US officials, travelling with Secretary of State Pompeo on his return to America, noted that the agreement stipulates "up to" 5,000 prisoners would be released, without referring specifically to Ghani's statements.
President Donald Trump told reporters Saturday at the White House that he will be "meeting personally with Taliban leaders in the not-too-distant future", and described the group as "tired of war".
He did not say where or why he plans to meet with Taliban leaders. He said he thinks they are serious about the deal they signed but warned that if it fails, the US could restart combat.
"We think we'll be successful in the end," he said, referring to all-Afghan peace talks and a final US exit.
But he also warned: "If bad things happen, we'll go back" in with military firepower.
Many Afghans, however, have welcomed the possibility of peace.
Afghans in eastern Nangarhar posted pictures of dozens of men dancing in the street to celebrate the signing. In eastern Khost province, a Taliban stronghold, the night sky was alight with red tracer bullets fired by celebrating residents.
Footballers in southern Helmand Province, also a Taliban stronghold that has seen heavy violence, began a three-day soccer tournament to celebrate the signing.
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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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