First round of ballots to be cast in UK PM race as Rishi Sunak holds on to lead
London(PTI): The first round of ballots will be cast on Wednesday in the race to elect a new Conservative Party leader who will succeed Boris Johnson as UK Prime Minister, with British Indian former finance minister Rishi Sunak holding on to his lead.
A shortlist of eight candidates on the first ballot paper includes Attorney General Suella Braverman, Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, Chancellor Nadhim Zahawi, Trade Minister Penny Mordaunt, former Cabinet ministers Kemi Badenoch and Jeremy Hunt and Tory backbencher Tom Tugendhat.
Each of the eight went head-to-head in the first closed-door hustings before fellow Conservative Party MPs to pitch for their support in speeches of 12 minutes each on Tuesday evening after nominations for the race closed.
The 358 Tory members of Parliament will cast the first set of votes for their favourites and the shortlisted candidates will progress to the next round only if they receive the backing of at least 30 of their colleagues. If all eight hit that figure, the candidate with the least votes will be eliminated from the second round of secret ballots scheduled for Thursday.
In an interview with The Daily Telegraph', Sunak said tackling inflation is his "number one economic priority", and claimed former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, an icon on the right of the Tory party, would have backed his approach.
I do believe I'm best placed to restore trust, rebuild the economy and reunite the country. I believe I can appeal in the broadest range of places, said the former Chancellor, whose Ready4Rishi campaign theme is made up of 3 Rs Restore Trust; Rebuild the Economy; Reunite the country.
I was brought up to believe that hard work was everything and it's core to who I am. It's what makes me a Conservative that I believe in the nobility of work, he said.
Even in the initial stages, the leadership race has become mired in allegations of dirty tricks with a so-called stop Rishi group of Johnson loyalists throwing their weight behind Liz Truss and accusing the Sunak camp of trying to fix the process.
Team Rishi want the candidate they know they can definitely beat in the final two and that is Jeremy Hunt, tweeted Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries, who is backing Truss.
The issue of tax for the low-tax favouring Tories has also been dominating the headlines, with another Johnson loyalist branding Sunak as a tax-hiking Chancellor.
"I think as a Chancellor he made decisions that were of the left rather than of the right. He was a tax-increasing Chancellor and I didn't support the decisions he made, said Cabinet minister Jacob Rees-Mogg, another Tory heavyweight backing Truss.
While Sunak and Truss seem the current frontrunners, Penny Mordaunt has strong support among the Conservative Party grassroots. The race will narrow down quickly after successive ballots knock out the candidates with the least support by next week.
Under the timetable set by the 1922 Committee of Tory backbenchers, the deadline to whittle down the shortlist to just two remaining candidates is July 21. The process will then be taken over by the Conservative Party headquarters to organise a series of hustings in different parts of the UK for the contenders to pitch their campaign pledges to the estimated 200,000 Conservative Party membership.
The candidate who receives the most votes will be elected the new Conservative Party leader and go on to take charge as the British Prime Minister.
It is expected that the new Tory leader will be announced on September 5 and go on to address his or her first Prime Minister's Questions (PMQs) in the House of Commons on September 7.
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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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