Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan Bill, 2025

Policy Update
Shivani Chauhan

Background

On 15 December 2025, Union Education Minister Shri Dharmendra Pradhan introduced the Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan (VBSA) Bill in the Lok Sabha. The Cabinet had approved it three days earlier, on 12 December 2025. In simple terms, this Bill proposes to completely overhaul the way India regulates its universities and colleges, something that has not happened since Independence.

Right now, three separate bodies oversee higher education: the University Grants Commission (UGC), the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), and the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE). These bodies were set up between 1956 and 1993, and over the decades their overlapping roles have created confusion, red tape, and inconsistent standards. The Bill proposes to replace all three with a single new body the Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan, and brings into law the vision of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020. Separate regulators for medicine, law, and architecture remain in place.

The Bill has now been sent to a 31-member Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) for review. Its report is expected in the Monsoon Session of 2026. The central question before the JPC and the country is whether this reform will genuinely improve higher education, or whether it will simply move power from several bodies to one.

Aspect	Detail
Legal Basis	Entry 66 of Union List: coordination and standards in higher education
What It Does	Replaces UGC, AICTE, and NCTE with one apex regulatory body
Exemptions	Medicine (NMC), Law (Bar Council), Architecture (COA) stay separate
Current Status	Under review by a 31-member Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC)

The Bill operationalizes the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 vision of a unified higher education regulator.

Functioning

The VBSA will have three councils sitting under it, each with a distinct job. This separation is important in the past as the UGC tried to do all three jobs at once, which created obvious conflicts of interest.

Regulatory Council (Viniyaman Parishad): Decides which institutions can open and operate. Think of it as the licensing authority.

Accreditation Council (Gunvatta Parishad): Independently checks and rates the quality of institutions. It will function separately from the body that gives licences, so the same authority cannot both approve and assess.

Standards Council (Manak Parishad): Sets the minimum academic standards that all institutions must meet.

Key Provisions:

Online, paperless approvals: Colleges and universities can apply for permissions online, assessed against clear eligibility criteria i.e. land, funding, faculty, and infrastructure. This is meant to cut down on delays and reduce the scope for discretionary decision-making.

Graded autonomy: Well-performing institutions get more freedom, to set their own curriculum, fees, and international collaborations. Poorly performing ones face closer oversight. The catch is that the Bill does not yet clearly define how ‘performance’ will be measured.

National Academic Credit Bank (NACB): Students can earn credits across different courses and institutions, which are stored for seven years. They can leave after one year with a certificate, after two years with a diploma, or complete a full three to four-year degree. This is especially valuable for students who need to pause their studies due to financial or personal circumstances.

Mandatory six-month internship: All undergraduate students must complete a six-month internship or apprenticeship before graduating. The goal is to make graduates more work-ready. The challenge is finding enough quality placements for the millions of students this would affect each year.

Industry professionals as faculty: People with 15 or more years of industry experience can be appointed as faculty without a PhD. This can bring valuable real-world knowledge into classrooms, though critics worry it may dilute academic rigour.

Foreign universities in India: Universities ranked in the global top 500 can open campuses in India. IITs and IIMs can open centres abroad. This could give Indian students access to international education without leaving the country.

Where the Bill Stands Now?

Performance-linked funding: 30 per cent of government funding to institutions will depend on outcomes such as how many graduates get jobs and how much research the institution produces. This incentivises results, but risks dis-advantaged universities that serve students from poorer or more remote backgrounds.

The JPC is the Bill’s most important current arena. Its 31 members are examining three key concerns.

First, the question of centralisation: education is on the Concurrent List, meaning both the Centre and states have the right to legislate on it. Critics argue this Bill effectively transfers control to the Centre, leaving state governments with little say over their own universities.

Second, whether one apex body can genuinely regulate a system as large and varied as India’s, roughly 1,100 universities and over 43,000 colleges spanning dozens of languages, funding models, and regional conditions.

Third, what happens to the hundreds of state universities that depend on their respective state governments for funding and direction.

The JPC’s report will be crucial. If it addresses the federalism and equity concerns with concrete amendments, the Bill could become a genuine reform. If it does not, implementation could be deeply uneven.

What this Bill Could Mean in Practice?

The Opportunities

Separating the regulatory, accreditation, and standards setting functions is a sound idea. A genuinely independent accreditation body could raise quality in ways that the current NAAC system has struggled to achieve. The Credit Bank, if it works, would give students, especially those from economically weaker backgrounds, the real flexibility in how they complete their education. And opening the door to top foreign universities could help retain students who currently go abroad for quality degrees.

The Risks

The most serious concern is not the ambition of the Bill but the concentration of power it creates. A single apex body with broad discretionary authority, without strong independence safeguards, could become a tool for political interference in academic life, just as the UGC sometimes was. The Bill’s current draft does not adequately address this.

The commercialisation risk is real too. Allowing foreign universities to repatriate profits without clear limits, while relaxing faculty qualification requirements, could shift the focus from education to revenue, especially if public universities continue to be underfunded. A two-tier system, in which well-resourced private and foreign institutions thrive while public universities struggle, is a genuinely plausible outcome if these provisions are not carefully balanced.

The digital-equity gap is another blind spot. A regulatory system that runs entirely on digital infrastructure assumes that all students and institutions have reliable internet access. Many do not, particularly in rural and tribal areas. Rolling out AI-based learning and digital credentialing before this gap is closed risks leaving the most disadvantaged students further behind.

Finally, tying 30 per cent of funding to employment outcomes sounds logical, but universities in poorer regions will almost always score lower on employability metrics, not because they teach badly, but because there are fewer jobs nearby. Without adjustment for context, this formula punishes the institutions that need support most.

The Federalism Problem

The opposition’s criticism of ‘excessive centralisation’ is worth taking seriously, not just as politics but as a policy concern. States with significant public university systems built over decades with state funding and designed to serve local needs, stand to lose significant autonomy under this Bill. The current draft provides no formal mechanism for states to have a say in how the apex body makes decisions that affect them. This is a gap the JPC should fill.

Way Forward

For the JPC to Address Now

Give states a formal voice: Create a consultative mechanism and not just advisory so state governments have real input into VBSA decisions affecting their institutions.

Clarify the funding plan: The Bill says nothing about how state universities will be funded during or after the transition. This needs a clear, time-bound answer before the Bill proceeds.

Protect academic freedom: Add explicit legal safeguards against regulatory interference in research, curriculum, or faculty appointments for non-academic reasons.

In the Medium Term

Build the internship infrastructure first: The government should publish a realistic plan for how millions of students will find quality placements before making the six-month internship compulsory.

Invest in digital infrastructure: Do not roll out digital-only regulation until internet access in rural and tribal areas is genuinely adequate.

Fix the funding formula: Adjust performance-linked funding to account for the socioeconomic conditions institutions operate in, so that universities serving disadvantaged students are not penalised.

The Bigger Question

No regulatory reform, however well-designed and can fix a system that is chronically underfunded. India currently spends less on higher education as a share of GDP than the NEP 2020 itself recommends. If this Bill creates new performance pressures without a matching increase in public investment, it may end up accelerating the decline of public universities rather than reviving them. The risk is that private and foreign providers fill the gap but only for those who can afford them.

The VBSA Bill is a good idea. But whether it becomes a genuine step forward depends on decisions that go beyond the text of the law: how much money the government puts in, how much independence the new body is actually given, and how seriously state concerns are addressed. The JPC’s deliberations are the right moment to get those answers on record.

References

Government of India, Ministry of Education. (2025). Shri Dharmendra Pradhan introduces Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan Bill, 2025 in Lok Sabha today. Press Information Bureau (PIB), Government of India.

PRS Legislative Research. (2026). The Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan Bill, 2025. PRS India.

The Indian Express. (2026). Joint parliamentary panel gets time until Monsoon Session to submit report on bill to replace UGC. The Indian Express.

Economic Times. (2026). Panel on Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan Bill gets time till last week of Monsoon session to submit report. The Economic Times.

ET Education. (2025). Lok Sabha: Opposition decries ‘Centralisation’ in new education Bill. Economic Times Academy.

About the Contributor

Shivani Chauhan is a Research & Editorial intern at IMPRI. She’s pursuing M.A. Education and Development from National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration. Her interest lies in education, public policy and governance.