Oppn forces govt to withdraw pvt varsity bills

Belagavi: The opposition on Tuesday forced the government to withdraw bills to set up six new private universities.Higher education minister CN Ashwath Narayan failed to table the bills as a determined opposition said such issues cannot be discussed in a hurry. The six proposed varsities are GM University, Karnataka Rajya Vokkaliga Sangha University, Kishkindha University, Sapthagiri University, T John University and Acharya University.Earlier, speaker Vishweshwar Hegde Kageri urged the government, including chief minister Basavaraj Bommai, to consider the proposition of tabling the bills and getting them passed at the joint legislature session, as there wasn’t enough time to get them approved even in the upper house. However, Narayan decided to push them, only to face opposition from legislators, both from his party and the others.“The minister appears to be in a tearing hurry by getting them passed in the cabinet on Monday and approved on Thursday. Education is a serious subject under PM Narendra Modi, and we need to assess each of them in detail. Let us defer them until the next session,” said BJP MLA Basanagouda Patil Yatnal, who was supported by former higher education minister Aravind Limbavali and senior BJP MLA Veeranna Charantimath.Kageri also was tough on the minister, and asked what’s the purpose of sanctioning these private universities when there is no out-of-the-box thinking and the institutions provide the same old traditional courses.Congress MLAs HK Patil and Priyank Kharge reminded the House that universities were becoming more like real-estate businesses rather than places of learning. “But if you are in a hurry, get ordinances passed. We will discuss the matter in the next session when you replace them with the bills,” suggested Patil. Narayan later agreed to withdraw the bills, saying that he would table them in the next session.
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