Dissenting voices have emerged within the government’s educational regulatory bodies following protests by three states governed by Opposition parties against the draft rules proposed by the University Grants Commission (UGC) for the appointment of teachers.

The All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), the regulatory body on technical education, has flagged several concerns about the draft UGC (Minimum Qualifications for Appointment and Promotion of Teachers and Academic Staff in Universities and Colleges and Measures for the Maintenance of Standards in Higher Education) Regulations, 2025.

AICTE chairman T.G. Sitharam wrote to higher education secretary Vineet Joshi on January 20 stating that the proposed regulations seeking to cover the technical education sector would create confusion and litigations.

The UGC draft says that the regulations will apply to the disciplines of engineering and technology at the affiliated colleges of different universities “till the regulatory authority concerned prescribes any norms or standards”.

The AICTE, however, has been prescribing norms and standards for technical courses such as engineering and management offered by the affiliated colleges. These colleges take AICTE approval for running the courses.

In 2000, the AICTE for the first time notified pay scales, service conditions and minimum qualifications for the appointment of teachers and other academic staff in the AICTE-approved technical institutions. Its last regulations on this issue were issued in 2019.

Two AICTE officials said the council was in the process of revising these regulations keeping in view changes in technical education in the last six years. The council set up a committee headed by R.K. Gajjar, the vice-chancellor
of Gujarat Technological
University, to review its 2019 regulations.

The committee has prepared draft guidelines on pay scale, service conditions and minimum qualifications for teachers’ appointments and to maintain standards in
technical education in the 2024 regulation.

The AICTE has held six consultation workshops in Pune, Calcutta, Bhopal, Delhi, Chennai and Jaipur. It has finalised the draft regulations, the officials said.

While the AICTE has its policy and is in the process of finalising a revised version, the UGC’s draft regulations seek to cover the engineering colleges in case the regulator has no such norms.

It is learnt that AICTE chairman Sitharam has said that the UGC draft regulations having provisions for technical and management disciplines marks a deviation from its earlier practices. The UGC’s earlier regulations on this issue notified in 2018 do not have such provisions.

Sitharam has sought the education ministry’s intervention to ask the UGC to frame their regulations on teacher appointments after aligning with the norms for technical and management institutions and AICTE guidelines “to prevent confusion and subsequent litigation in future”.