Pakistan and India conflict was 'very big', I settled that: Trump
New York/Washington (PTI): US President Donald Trump on Tuesday repeated his claim that he ended the “very big” conflict between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan.
In his remarks to military leaders in Quantico, Trump also said that he was "honoured" when Pakistan Army chief Field Marshal Asim Munir, "who is a very important guy in Pakistan", praised him for saving millions of lives.
"I have settled so many wars" in the nine months of his administration, he said. "I've settled seven. And yesterday we might have settled the biggest of them all, although I don't know, Pakistan and India was very big, both nuclear powers. I settled that.”
Referring to his peace plan to end the Gaza conflict, announced on Monday, Trump said, “We got it, I think, settled. We'll see. Hamas has to agree, and if they don’t, it's going to be very tough on them. But it is what it is. But all of the Arab nations, Muslim nations, have agreed.”
In his remarks, Trump again went back to the conflict between India and Pakistan and praised the Pakistani officials for lauding him for saving millions of lives.
“I had India and Pakistan, (they) were going at it. And I called them both, and in this case, I used trade,” Trump said.
Trump said he told the “two big nuclear nations” that he is “not going to trade" with them. They responded, "'No, no, no, no, you cannot do that'. I said, 'yes, I can. You go into this freaking war that I'm hearing about’,” Trump said, adding that they shot down seven planes. He, however, did not specify which country's jets he was referring to.
“It was starting. There's a lot of bad blood. And I said, ‘You do this, there is not going to be any trade'. And I stopped the war. It was going, it was raging for four days, but that was just the beginning, and we stopped it. It was a great thing,” Trump said.
Last week, Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Army Chief Munir met Trump in the White House.
Trump said the Prime Minister of Pakistan “was here along with the Field Marshal, who's a very important guy in Pakistan, and he was here three days ago. And I didn't even realise it, as beautiful as he said it, but he said that to a group of people that were with us, two generals, but a group, he said, ‘This man saved millions of lives because he saved the war from going on, and that war was going to get very bad, very, very bad. President Trump saved millions and millions of lives. That was a bad war’.”
Trump said he “was very honoured. I loved the way he (Munir) said it.”
He added that White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles was there at the meeting too, and "she said that was the most beautiful thing. But we saved a lot of them. Saved a lot of them.”
Since May 10, when Trump announced on social media that India and Pakistan had agreed to a “full and immediate” ceasefire after a “long night” of talks mediated by Washington, he has repeated his claim nearly 50 times that he “helped settle” the tensions between India and Pakistan.
In his address to world leaders from the UN podium last week, Trump repeated his claim that he stopped the conflict between India and Pakistan.
India has been consistently maintaining that the understanding on cessation of hostilities with Pakistan was reached following direct talks between the Directors General of Military Operations of the two militaries.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made it clear in Parliament that no leader of any country asked India to stop Operation Sindoor.
Trump had said he was told that if he could stop the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, he should get the Nobel Prize.
"I said, 'Well, what about the seven others? I should get a Nobel Prize for each one'. So they said, 'but if you stop Russia and Ukraine, sir, you should be able to get the Nobel'. I said I stopped seven wars. That's one war, and that's a big one," he said.
He added that he had thought the Russia-Ukraine conflict would be easy to resolve "because I have a good relationship with President Putin, disappointed in him, but I do. I thought that would be the easiest one, but we'll get it done one way or the other."
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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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