Elderly Sikh woman detained by immigration authorities in US, family calls for her release
New York (PTI): A 73-year old Sikh woman has been detained by immigration authorities in California after she went for a routine check-in with the US agency, sparking protests and concerns among her family and members of the community.
Harjit Kaur, who has lived in the East Bay in Northern California for more than 30 years, was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials during a routine check-in earlier this week, a report in Berkeleyside, a nonprofit news portal, said.
The report added that her family along with hundreds of members from the community organised a protest Friday, calling for the immediate release of Kaur, who was detained on Monday after ICE asked her to come to the San Francisco office to turn in additional paperwork.
“She was taken to a detention centre in Bakersfield,” the report said.
Harjit Kaur was undocumented, according to a report in ABC7News. She came to the United States in 1992 from India as a single mother with two sons. Her asylum case was denied in 2012, but since then she has “faithfully reported” to ICE in San Francisco every six months for more than 13 years, her daughter-in-law Manji Kaur said.
The Berkeleyside report said that “ICE assured her she could remain in the United States under supervision with work permits until they could receive her travel documents.”
The protest on Friday was organised by Kaur’s family, Indivisible West Contra Costa County and the Sikh Centre. Members of US Rep John Garamendi’s staff, local elected officials and other political leaders also attended, the report said.
KTVU Fox 2 news portal quoted Congressman Garamendi as saying that his office has sent an inquiry to ICE requesting that Kaur be reunited with her family.
In a statement, Garamendi said: “President (Donald) Trump initially promised to go after the ‘worst of the worst’ in his immigration policy. Yet this administration’s decision to detain a 73-year-old woman — a respected member of the community with no criminal record who has faithfully reported to ICE every six months for more than 13 years — is one more example of the misplaced priorities of Trump’s immigration enforcement.”
“Our office will do everything possible to support her case and her family,” he said. Local Council member Dilli Bhattarai said, according to The Berkeleyside report, that he is looking into how his city can put pressure on the federal government to release Kaur.
“She is not doing any harm to the community. She is an abiding [constituent] just like us,” Bhattarai said. “She has all the rights to be here as a community member and we should all support her immediate release.”
Kaur, who has two grandsons and three granddaughters among other relatives, had worked for over two decades at a local Indian clothing store, the report said.
Her granddaughter Sukhdeep Kaur described Kaur as an “independent, selfless, hard-working” and termed her as a “mother figure” [to the community].
“We are all just in a state of shock,” Sukhdeep Kaur said.
Her family voiced concern over her health, claiming that being detained at her age with serious health issues such as thyroid disease, migraine, knee pain, and anxiety, her life could be at risk, the report added.
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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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