Panel for farm edn under accreditation authority

In its report to both the Houses of Parliament on the National Accreditation Regulatory Authority for Higher Educational Institutions Bill, 2010 on Friday, the panel noted that the Ministry of Human Resource Development justified the exclusion of agriculture education from the purview of the proposed law on the ground that the constitutional mandate puts agriculture education in the sphere of the state legislature.

“The committee fails to understand the justification for students opting for agriculture education being deprived of the benefits of mandatory accreditation as proposed for other streams of education,” it said. The proposed law aims at improving the quality of higher education by setting a benchmark for assessment of quality of education.

“In such a scenario, exclusion of agriculture education and research from the mandatory process of accreditation can be termed as discriminatory from the point of view of protection of student interests,” the panel observed.

The Ministry should, therefore, take the initiative for coverage of agriculture education under mandatory accreditation by initiating the exercise of bringing in the legislation in accordance with the provisions of Article 249 of the Constitution which empowers Parliament to enact laws on state subjects.