New Delhi: Smriti Irani and Rahul Gandhi may have been political foes, who fought a pitched battle against each other and with no holds barred. But Smriti is carrying forward one of Rahul’s favourite projects – the Foreign Universities Bill, which allows top Ivy League universities and Oxbridge to set up campuses in India. This project seems to have found favour with Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself.
When the proposal was introduced in 2012 in the Rajya Sabha by Education Minister Kapil Sibal, the Left objected strongly, alleging that sub-standard private foreign universities would be able to enter India once the education sector was opened up.
The proposal was then sent for study to a parliamentary committee and was never revived because UPA did not have the numbers to get it cleared in the Rajya Sabha.
 “The contours of the Bill will remain the same,” said an official in the Education Ministry, confirming that the proposed legislation has been shortlisted as a must-do for the ministry’s first-100-days agenda.
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