2 months ago
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A House sheet connected Wednesday (March 18, 2026) flagged the “critical vacancy situation” astatine higher acquisition regulators specified arsenic the University Grants Commission (UGC) and the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE). The Union Education Ministry is readying to dismantle some the bodies nether its projected Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan Bill, 2025.
The Department-related Standing Committee connected Education, Women, Children, Youth, and Sports – headed by Congress Rajya Sabha MP Digvijaya Singh – tabled its study connected the Department of Higher Education’s Demands for Grants for FY 2026-27. It expressed interest astir the lack of centralised information connected the fig of vacancies successful Central universities and cautioned the Department against racking up expenditure successful the past months of the fiscal year.
It noted the concern astatine the UGC, saying that “516 retired of 763 sanctioned non-teaching positions are vacant”, which amounted to a vacancy complaint of 67.6%. “This severely impacts UGC’s capableness to discharge its statutory functions, including monitoring thousands of universities, processing assistance proposals, and implementing NEP 2020,” it said.
In AICTE, “only 20 posts person been filled up connected regular/ imperishable ground successful the past six years”, adding that 63.6% of sanctioned posts successful the mediate and elder administrative levels were vacant, which “may hamper the AICTE’s operations and the broader method scenery arsenic it regulates implicit 10,000 method institutions”.
The committee highlighted that India’s expenditure connected acquisition from some the Centre and the States stood astatine 4.06% of the GDP arsenic of 2022-23, falling abbreviated of the NEP 2020 people of 6% of the GDP.
The committee called for a “robust quarterly expenditure monitoring mechanism”, noting that successful FY 2024-25, the department’s existent expenditure fell abbreviated of the Budget Estimates by astir ₹4,500 crore. The sheet noted the “alarming 73.9% fall” successful the Capital Head (from ₹10.27 crore successful BE 2025-26 to ₹2.68 crore successful BE 2026-27), recommending that the authorities hole a five-year Capital Investment Plan with nonstop superior allocation from 2027-28 onwards.
The authorities has introduced the Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan Bill past December proposing to subsume the functions of the UGC, AICTE, and the National Council for Teacher Education successful a caller higher acquisition regulatory structure. This volition beryllium headed by a 12-member umbrella commission, nether which 3 abstracted regulatory, standards, and accreditation councils volition operate. The Ministry has justified this betterment arsenic indispensable to trim conflicts of involvement and trim the multiplicity of regulations and compliance for higher acquisition institutes.
The Bill was introduced to objections from Opposition parties, arguing that it represented “executive overreach”, subjected higher acquisition institutes to “pervasive enforcement control, graded autonomy, intrusive compliance requirements, terrible penalties, and closure powers”, and went against the principles of federalism. A Joint Committee of Parliament, headed by BJP MP D. Purandeshwari, is presently examining the Bill.
On Central universities, the House sheet said that these institutes were recovered to person “efficiently and judiciously” utilized the resources allocated to them. However, connected module recruitments and vacancies, the committee noted that contempt implicit 16,000 module posts and implicit 11,000 non-faculty posts being filled from 2022-2025, “significant module vacancies persist crossed Centrally Funded Institutions (CFIs)”.
It recommended that the authorities hole a “consolidated, annually updated vacancy registry of each CFIs” that tin beryllium utilized to way vacancies. The committee besides noted that determination was an contented of “significant summation successful fees” successful immoderate Central universities, including the University of Delhi, and sought a elaborate justification for this.
The committee welcomed the Prime Minister’s One Nation, One Subscription arsenic a “landmark initiative”, which provided equitable entree to implicit 13,000 planetary world journals for implicit 6,500 higher acquisition institutes, but besides noted that the authorities did not person a fiscal program successful spot for erstwhile the existent three-year subscription ends successful 2027. It recommended that the Department “negotiate semipermanent agreements with publishers to unafraid predictable subscription costs.
