Click to play videoNew Delhi: The Centre may have cleared the deck for foreign universities to set up their campus in India, but it may take a while for that to happen.
For the students dreaming of getting admitted to international brands like Yale and Harvard in India itself, there is a dampener as the Foreign Education Bill passed by the Cabinet to regulate the entry of top institutes could hit a major hurdle.
Political consensus eludes the proposed law once again with the BJP seeking wider consultations and the Left openly opposing the bill.
"It's a bill that can totally change our education system and it can also even play with our education system. Keeping this in mind, once this bill is approved in Parliament, we will take a call whether to accept it or not," says senior BJP leader SS Ahluwalia.
The bill had to be withdrawn once under Left pressure in the United Progressive Alliance Government's first innings.
The revised bill is also silent on reserving seats for SC/ST students, which is one of the main demands of the Left.
The bill though seeks a minimum corpus of Rs 50 crore and a no-objection certificate from the home country's embassy in India before giving permission to open a campus here.
Many foreign education providers are already in talks with their some Indian institutes working on a joint venture.
But the success of these initiatives would depend very much on whether government is able to satisfy Opposition's apprehensions on the bill.
In the last two sessions the Government had to withdraw two bills - the judges enquiry bill and nuclear liability bill in absence of a political consensus since it is in a minority in the Rajya Sabha.
With the Opposition once again joining hands and upping the ante on foreign education bill, political managers in UPA will have to go for wider consultations to alley Opposition fears.
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