Terming the draft regulations of the University Grants Commission (UGC) for the appointment of teachers and other academic staff in universities and colleges as “draconian” and “anti-Constitution”, the Congress on Tuesday demanded their withdrawal with immediate effect.
The University Grants Commission (UGC) has recently published the draft UGC (Minimum Qualifications for Appointment and Promotion of Teachers and Academic Staff in Universities and Colleges and Measures for the Maintenance of Standards in Higher Education) Regulations, 2025.…
— Jairam Ramesh (@Jairam_Ramesh) January 14, 2025
The UGC recently published the draft UGC (Minimum Qualifications for Appointment and Promotion of Teachers and Academic Staff in Universities and Colleges and Measures for the Maintenance of Standards in Higher Education) Regulations, 2025, proposing a major overhaul in the recruitment of assistant professors and vice-chancellors.
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"Among its many disastrous ideas include the following -- Removal of the 10 per cent ceiling on contractual professorships, opening the gates for the large-scale contractualisation of teaching in higher education. This is going to destroy the quality of our institutions and the spirit of academic independence," Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh said in a post on X.
He alleged that the new rules propose to withdraw all powers of the state government in appointing vice chancellors to state universities and gives the Union government unilateral power in this regard. He noted that generally the university chancellors are governors who were appointed by the Centre.
“The rules have also been amended to allow non-academics to be nominated vice chancellors, a move that is fully intended to enable the appointment of RSS apparatchiks in positions of power over academia,” he further said.
Ramesh said M.C. Sudhakar, the Karnataka higher education minister, has already written to the Union Minister for Education against these rules.
“The Congress rejects them (the new rules) and calls for an immediate withdrawal of them,” he added.
Earlier, Congress president Mallikarjuin Kharge had alleged that the government's education policy is aimed at controlling universities, throttling autonomous institutes and imposing RSS ideology on public education.
"The BJP-RSS is continuously attacking higher education in India. Narendra Modi ji, you do blow your own trumpet with 'Pariksha pe charcha' and 'Exam warriors', but the National Talent Search Examination Scholarship (NTSE) has been discontinued for three years, as revealed by newspapers," he had said.
The Centre, meanwhile, hits back, saying the opposition party was "selling lies" about the draft recruitment norms.
"The selection committee structure of UGC Regulations 2025 is actually the format of UGC Regulations 2010. In this, a selection committee has been formed for the appointment of teachers and other academic staff and to maintain high standards," Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said.
"The Congress can never accept that the youth of the country should be educated and the country should develop. That is why spreading confusion on issues like education, misleading the youth and wanting to spread unrest in the country has become the policy of the entire Congress party, including Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge," he alleged.
