Teachers of ISI, Calcutta — past and present — along with students and research scholars, said at a news conference on Monday that the draft ISI Bill, 2025, smacked of an attempt by the Union government to push the institute from “autonomy to autocracy”.
Partha Majumder, National Science Chair of the government of India and a former ISI professor, alleged that the bill, which seeks to alter the composition of the institute’s council and academic council, would centralise authority in the hands of the Union government and its nominees. “This will decimate the democratic structure that has guided the institute since being established as a society in 1931,” he said.
Majumder said the bill proposes an overarching board of governors made up of nominated or appointed members of the Union government, effectively abolishing the roles of the existing council and academic council. “We would elect teachers to these bodies as part of a democratic practice that has always distinguished the ISI. All this will become history with the board of governors coming in,” he said.
He also criticised the government for pushing the bill without internal consultation. “What is more concerning is that the Union government did not bother to hold any discussion with the real stakeholders. There was no review by any expert committee,” said Majumder, who founded the National Institute of Biomedical Genomics in Kalyani. He added that the move reminded him of similar erosion of autonomy at the genomics institute, from which he retired in 2016.
At the Press Club Kolkata news conference, teachers and students said the bill amounted to a “legislative takeover of ISI”, converting it from an autonomous society registered under the Bengal government into a statutory body under complete central control.
ISI, Calcutta professor Arijit Bishnu said the bill sought to abolish the ISI society and turn it into “a body corporate”.
The Union government, which sought public opinion on the draft bill till November 3, is likely to place it in Parliament during the upcoming session.
Research scholar Udvas Das said the draft proposes to repeal the 1959 ISI Act and replace it with new legislation.
The bill strengthens the board of governors, which would oversee policy, administration and finance, teachers and students said. Under the proposed structure, the academic council would lose its final authority and only make recommendations to the board, they said.
“We still don’t know what triggered the need to change the structure of the institute,” said professor Bishnu. “ISI has over the years expanded into newer chapters and excelled on the strength of its autonomy.”
Teachers and students announced they would form a human chain to protest outside the Baranagar campus on November 28.
Under the leadership of Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis, ISI, Calcutta, played a pioneering role in shaping India’s planning and policy during the Second Five-Year Plan (1956-61). For years, it has been the country’s premier statistical institute.