National Assembly passes Nepal University Bill

The National Assembly session today passed the 'Nepal University Bill, 2080 BS' by a majority.

Minister for Education, Science and Technology Ashok Kumar Rai had presented a proposal in a session of the upper house of the Federal Parliament seeking passage of the Bill. Similarly, a motion was introduced in the session today seeking deliberations on the Bill along with the report of the Legislation Management Committee.

The bill designed to make provisions related to Nepal University will pave the way for establishing new university. The government had registered this bill in the parliament last November, citing it was necessary to make the higher education and research of high standard, useful for life, innovative and timely.

It is stated in the Bill that the Nepal University would be established as a not-for-profit and non-governmental public university to produce skilled, creative and competitive human resources with the goal of contributing to building a prosperous State by creating new knowledge and innovation through multi-disciplinary studies, teaching and research based on liberal arts.

Minister for Education Ashok Kumar Rai said the university should be opened appropriate to the federal structure and the government was positive for bringing the Integrated Education Policy for that purpose. He, however, said that adequate study has to be made for this.

One hundred bighas of land can be made immediately available for establishing the university outside the Kathmandu Valley, he said. Preparations are underway to bring an Education Umbrella Act for designing the curriculum and determining its quality, said Minister Rai.

There is a need to bring the education policy and the umbrella act related to higher education to identify whether or not it requires more universities in the country in the context when there are already enough, said Khimlal Devkota on the occasion.

Similarly, Ganga Kumari Belbase stressed the need for improving the quality of the universities operational in the country by ending their politicization.

Other lawmakers, Suresh Kumar Alemagar, Kumar Dasaudi and Narayan Prasad Dahal underscored the need for improving the quality of education and focusing on the quality of universities instead of adding their number.

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