Not caring two hoots about human resource development minister Kapil Sibal and his controversial Foreign Educational Institutions (regulation of entry and operations) Bill, 2010 under scrutiny of a parliamentary standing committee, the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) has come out with its own policy to permit the foreign institutions to set up campuses anywhere in India.

The policy notified by AICTE, a statutory technical education regulator under a 1987 Act of Parliament, runs contrary to the key features of the pending Bill brought to allow entry of foreign institutes with regulations and hence it is seen as an affront to parliament's authority.

Even the ruling Congress MPs were up in arms against Sibal for bringing the Bill as they felt he was opening up floodgates for foreign institutes to enter India, though he claimed it will stop exodus of students to foreign countries for higher education and provide them foreign degrees at their doorsteps.

The Bill introduced by Sibal in the Lok Sabha last May provides for allowing foreign institutes to offer own degrees, but the AICTE policy mandates them to get affiliated to an Indian university and offer degrees of that university. The Bill does not have any such requirement of affiliation to the Indian university.

The policy also requires the foreign institutes to register in India as a society or trust or as a company under section 25 of the Company Act meant for the not-for-profit bodies, while the pending Bill has no such requirement.

AICTE officials say the educational institutions in India are not allowed to be run for profit and the same criteria has been adopted in mandating registration of the foreign institutes to ensure they plough back surplus generated from educational activities for growth of the institutes in India.

They said the new policy supersedes the 2003 policy on the foreign institutes' collaboration with the Indian institutes that did not have clarity on many issues, including eligibility of institutions for such partnerships, because of which there was poor response from foreign institutes for collaboration.

The revised policy gives a roadmap for enhancing collaboration between Indian and foreign institutions in teaching and research and lays down clear-cut guidelines for the foreign institutions to set up campuses in India, the officials said.

No private or government engineering, technical, hotel management or pharmacy college or polytechnic can be set up without the express approval of the AICTE which has been in existence since 1945 as an advisory body but given teeth as a statutory body through an Act of Parliament in 1987.

The foreign institutes will also have to submit a detailed proposal alike any Indian institutes to the AICTE to run the specific courses. And like the mandatory rules for the Indian institutes, the foreign institute will also have to show the required land and built-up premises and proposed faculty before applying for permission.

The AICTE officials say the pending Bill before parliament would have opened floodgates for the foreign institutes to exploit the Indian students while their policy has very tough norms, particularly requiring them to be first registered to ensure they do not start making money.

Also, the policy shields the students from all sorts of degrees that a foreign institute may cook up as it can provide only the recognised degrees and diplomas of the Indian universities, they said.

Registration as a society or a trust is not possible for any foreign body unless cleared by the external affairs ministry and that will be a double check on preventing the bogus institutes getting into India as the ministry will be verifying their antecedents through its embassies and missions, the officials added.