The Congress on Tuesday demanded that any regulator set up for higher education should be mandated to oversee the implementation of Article 15(5) of the Constitution, which allows reservations for SC, ST and OBC students in private institutions.
Senior Congress leader Jairam Ramesh also pointed out that Article 15(5) permits the government to mandate reservations for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and OBCs in private higher education institutions,
"Any such regulator should be mandated to oversee the implementation of Article 15(5) of the Constitution that came into effect exactly twenty years ago today. Article 15(5) was inserted by Dr Manmohan Singh’s Government through the 93rd Amendment. It was a historic moment which allowed the introduction of 27 per cent reservation for students from the OBCs in Centrally-funded higher education institutions (HEIs), including the IITs, IIMs, Central Universities, and NITs. Since then lakhs of students from the OBC communities have availed of this reservation, bringing economic and social mobility to millions," senior Congress leader Jairam Ramesh wrote on X.
Ramesh also pointed out that the Article 15(5) was upheld by the Supreme Court on May 6, 2014, in the Pramati Educational and Cultural Trust v Union of India case.
Despite this, he noted, there is still no parliamentary law enforcing it.
He cited an August 2025 report of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Education, which urged Parliament to legislate mandatory reservations in private institutions after finding representation of these communities to be “abysmally and unacceptably low.”
Ramesh said the Congress “reiterates its commitment to social justice as embodied in Article 15 (5) and calls on the Modi Government to implement it in full.”
The Opposition’s concern stems from the Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan bill, introduced in the Lok Sabha on December 15, 2025. The bill proposed an overhaul of India’s higher education regulatory structure by replacing the University Grants Commission (UGC) with a single central body.
The Opposition flagged multiple concerns, including the Hindi nomenclature of the bill, which they said violates Article 348 of the Constitution, and the fear that the proposed framework would erode institutional autonomy by concentrating regulatory powers in the hands of the Centre.
A day after its introduction, responding to these objections, Union minister of parliamentary affairs Kiren Rijiju said the government would refer the bill to a Joint Parliamentary Committee.
In the Lok Sabha’s Business Advisory Committee meeting, he also accepted the Opposition’s request for more time to study what he described as an extensive bill requiring careful deliberation.
The Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan Bill, 2025 seeks to merge three statutory bodies, the UGC, the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), and the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) — into a single regulator.
Medical and law colleges, however, remain outside its scope. The proposed body would function under the direct administrative control of the ministry of education.