ISI council split on overhaul Bill, institute's other centres support changes
Telegraph | 25 January 2026
The ISI Calcutta representatives on the ISI council have opposed a proposed Bill seeking to overhaul the institute’s governance structure, while representatives from some other ISI centres support the changes.
The council, ISI’s highest administrative decision-making body, met on Saturday to discuss the contentious Bill proposed by the Narendra Modi government.
The ISI Calcutta representatives said they found no justification for replacing the institute’s society-based structure.
“We said that such a society-based structure runs at the Max Planck Institute in Germany, which has produced Nobel Laureates. The same structure prevails at Oxford and Cambridge. So we asked the representatives from the Union ministry of statistics and programme implementation about the rationale for disturbing our structure,” a council member said on Saturday evening.
They also asked whether ISI’s decision-making process had ever been delayed because of the present structure. “The ministry’s representatives could not cite an instance,” the council member said.
Some representatives from the other ISI centres argued that the board of governors proposed in the bill could provide a leaner governance structure.
The proposed law will replace the 1959 Act passed under Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru.
An ISI professor said it remained unclear why the ministry was “seeking to destabilise the governance structure of an institute that has been autonomous and democratic”.
ISI currently has a society at the top, registered under the West Bengal Society’s Registration Act, followed by a council and an academic council, the highest body on academic affairs.
An ISI Calcutta professor said: “First, they didn’t bother to consult the council or explain what necessitated a Bill that vests unbridled powers in a board of governors loaded with members handpicked by the ministry. The council is being abandoned. The academic council is being weakened, with the board armed with powers to introduce or discontinue courses.”
“If internationally acclaimed institutes can run with the society-based structure, what is the justification for scrapping it and replacing it with a body corporate model?” the professor asked.
Sources said dean of studies Biswabrata Prashan read out at Saturday’s meeting a resolution from the special academic council, which met on January 20, listing inconsistencies in the bill.
When contacted, the dean declined comment, saying the meeting was an internal affair of the institute.
Calls and text messages to Puja Singh Mondal, an additional secretary of the ministry who attended the council meeting online, did not yield a response.
Mondal, who oversees ISI on behalf of the ministry, was among two ministry officials who attended Saturday’s meeting.
During the meeting, sources said, Mondal referred to a brainstorming session she said was held at ISI’s Bangalore centre on June 5, 2025, at the behest of the ministry and the institute on the new legislation.
A council member said they raised doubts about what actually transpired at that meeting.
Representatives from some other ISI centres who favour the Bill argued that the council is not a statutory body and that ISI must frequently consult the ministry to get decisions approved, which impedes decision-making, a council member said.
“It is in this context that they justified the creation of a board of governors, which would be a statutory body,” the council member said.
The ministry said in a recent FAQ that the current governance model had “limited potential for institutional reforms and growth.”
The ministry argued that the size and composition of the existing ISI council impede effective decision-making. The large council size, excessive internal representation and large number of elected members “hinders decision-making, as even a small group of dissenters can effectively block important decisions,” the ministry said.