Bihar government faces first pushback from within: BJP and JDU leaders say don’t change education structure

3 min readPatnaJul 18, 2026 10:15 PM IST

Chief Minister Samrat Chaudhary during the inauguration of a new Government Degree College in Bhagalpur on Wednesday. (ANI)

As the Bihar government prepares to introduce draft legislation to restructure higher education in the state and bring undergraduate colleges under its control, some NDA legislators have voiced concern over the measure.

In a memorandum to Chief Minister Samrat Choudhary, some NDA members of Bihar’s legislative council and assembly have voiced their reservations about the move, which aims at decoupling undergraduate colleges from their parent state universities through its draft legislation. This comes after The Indian Express reported that the Bill is likely to be introduced in the upcoming Monsoon session.

The Bill proposes that Bihar’s 500 constituent colleges that offer undergraduate degrees will come directly under a newly created higher education department instead of the state Governor, who is also the Chancellor of state universities. This means that the Chancellor will have control over only postgraduate courses.

In their letter to the chief minister, JD-U’s Sanjeev Kumar Singh, Virendra Narayan Yadav, Afaque Ahmad and Neeraj Kumar, and BJP’s Nawal Kishore Yadav and Sanjay Kumar Singh advocated against such a move, arguing that it would “severely compromise academic freedom and institutional independence”.

The legislators argued that universities are not “merely administrative structures but are autonomous academic ecosystems where teaching, research, curriculum design, examinations, appointments, and the maintenance of academic standards are bound together under an integrated institutional framework”.

“Separating undergraduate colleges from universities fundamentally alters the core character of the affiliating university system,” the letter says.

Undergraduate education, the legislators argue, forms the bedrock of the academic pipeline.

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“State universities currently design syllabi, conduct examinations, monitor quality and pave the way for postgraduate study and advanced research. Fragmenting this integrated framework is likely to weaken academic continuity and coordination between undergraduate and postgraduate education,” it says.

Raising concerns over an impending shift from university governance to bureaucracy, the letter says: “If the bill passes, crucial decisions regarding the transfer, posting, deployment of teachers, and overall institutional governance will shift from democratic university bodies, such as the Academic Council and the Syndicate, to executive bureaucrats.”

The leaders noted that the experience of several states shows robust universities are built on stable institutional structures, not constantly changing administrative frameworks.

Top-tier institutions such as Delhi University, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Banaras Hindu University and the University of Hyderabad continue to thrive because academic decision-making remains squarely with the universities, the letter argues.

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The legislators also highlighted what they described as a contradiction between the proposed bill and national policy. The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 repeatedly emphasises greater academic and administrative autonomy for higher education institutions to foster innovation, multidisciplinary studies and vibrant research, the letter says. “The proposed centralisation runs directly counter to the spirit of the NEP,” it says.

The letter urges the chief minister to upload the bill to a public portal for “comprehensive review”, insisting that no legislation altering the administrative framework of higher education “should be finalised without extensive consultations with universities, teacher unions, educationists and student representatives”.

Santosh Singh is a Senior Assistant Editor with The Indian Express since June 2008.

Expertise

He covers Bihar with main focus on politics, society and governance.

Investigative and explanatory stories are also his forte. Singh has 25 years of experience in print journalism covering Bihar, Delhi, Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka.

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