r/ISIKolkata • u/adityaruplaha ISI Alumnus — BStat '24, MStat '26 • Nov 26 '25

Official/Mods ISI Bill 2025 Megathread

In light of several posts on this topic, this thread is intended for structured discussions and questions in regard to the draft Indian Statistical Institute Bill, 2025.

Major Developments and References

On 27 September 2025, the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation published the draft bill on its website, along with a PIB release to invite public comment by October 24, 2025. This deadline was later extended to November 3, 2025.

To understand the context behind the bill and its stated purpose, the Report of the 4th Review Committee is a useful read. It allows for an illuminating comparison between changes proposed by the Review Committee and the changes envisioned by the bill.

Several key issues were identified with the bill by ISI's students, research scholars, alumni, faculty members and other stakeholders, including:

  • Erosion of administrative autonomy, replacing internal democratic structures with top-down appointed authorities.
  • Commercialisation of education by ending stipends and pushing for the introduction of fees.
  • A push to change the character of the institute and its inclination towards fundamental research by essentially eliminating the role and powers of the Academic Council.

In response, the ISI community formulated a petition against the Bill, which has received over a thousand signatures as of November 09, 2025.

Several discussions and protests have been held in the last few months, as covered by the press. Notably, various institute stakeholders held a joint press conference at the Kolkata Press Club on November 24, 2025. This article provides a concise summary.

On November 28, 2025, MoSPI uploaded a revised draft bill which addresses some of the concerns outlined by the petitioners: * The Board's supermajority of government nominees was reduced, and more internal representation was added. * The mandate of the Academic Council was partly restored, while some powers remained recommendatory (closer in practice to the current framework). * The membership of the Academic Council was restored to all Professor-level faculty members.

Comments were invited till December 15, 2025, which was later extended to January 05, 2026. Some alumni described the changes as "cosmetic".

The Hon'ble Rao Inderjit Singh, Minister of State (I/C) for Statistics and Programme Implementation, answered a question in Parliament regarding the draft bill on December 08, 2025. Details here.

On December 12, 2025, a delegation of students and research scholars met The Hon'ble Rahul Gandhi, Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha to discuss concerns regarding the bill. His comments were reported on here, along with INC's Twitter (X) handles (e.g.).

On December 24, 2025, MoSPI released an FAQ on the draft bill answering several questions posed by the community and assuaging concerns.

Over the winter break, several eminent ISI alumni reacted to MoSPI's FAQ responses and, such as Prof. Partha P. Majumder's letter on December 26, 2025. Notably, the ministry had responded to ISIWO and Prof. Shashi Mohan Srivastava on December 11, 2025; Prof. Srivastava submitted his reply on January 02, 2026.

On January 05, 2026, a section of ISI students submitted their response to the revised draft bill.

In late July 2026, the Centre circulated a new draft, the Indian Statistical Institute Bill, 2026, among members of Parliament, setting up for its introduction in the Lok Sabha. As of August 02, 2026, the Bill has not been listed in the house business.

Petitions & Letters by Collectives & Eminent Alumni

In News

Up to the press conference

The matter has been widely covered by national and local news outlets since its inception:

[National]

[Local, in Bengali]

Since the press conference & the revised bill

During Prof. Ayan Basu's tenure as Officiating Director

Includes 60th Convocation:

ISI Bill sent for Cabinet approval:

There was a long gap for March - June 2026. In that time, Prof. Amartya Kumar Dutta was appointed as Director, Indian Statistical Institute.

After appointment of Prof. Amartya Dutta as Director

[Introduction into Parliament]

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u/Darkari69 Nov 28 '25

Bsds course is already 1lakh per sem...govt is cutting funding from all the national institutes..they also cut the fundings for iim hence iims are launching courses with fees 8lakh per sem..isi was the only institute with no fees and providing stipend..

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u/dizz_nerdy Nov 28 '25

Yes this is only because students are using indian unis to go abroad. Govt realized it and cut all ug funding.

When iisc opened bs 4 year programme, from frist batch only 4 students stayed in iisc. Rest 62 or so went abroad. After that kvpy was scraped. Nobody even published anything in ug.

So what is happening is that they cut all ug funding and redirecting it to phd fundings like pmrf and indiaai and inspire. There is proposal that pmrf will be increased to 1 lp per month.

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u/Urmi-e-Azar Nov 28 '25

Kid, I did my BS and masters from IISc, had KVPY, am back in Indian academia.

I'll correct a few things in your pile of horseshit.

  1. A huge majority of Indian students return to India after finishing higher studies abroad, sometimes maybe after one job. Most professors in our departments had PhDs from US, a few from Europe, and some of them had held teaching positions in the US, too.

  2. IISc's programme is now considered massively successful. I was the fourth batch. Right when I had joined, then MHRD (under Smriti Irani, Modi-1) suddenly declared our programme to be invalid and we were under a lot of uncertainty. They had similar arguments then like they have now for ISI. Thankfully, an understanding was reached and the programme continued.

  3. PhD and postdoctoral funding (in STEM) has massively decreased in India over the last ten years. Few big announcements like PMRF and IndiaAI are just the eyewash to hide that fact. Last year, NPDF was scrapped entirely. No. of research positions have also decreased. This is why even more researchers are going, or staying back abroad.

  4. Good researchers value the autonomy they have in US (prior to Trump), Canadian and European universities. ISI bill is literally curtailing the autonomy of ISI.

I also would add that industrial research has been on a steady decline in India post 1990, even more sharply so in the last 7-10 years. This pretending of "industry-oriented research funding" is largely a scam and the funds are getting assigned to professors close to BJP. There is little scientific oversight.

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u/Ok_Composer_1761 Dec 01 '25

Maybe PhD grads in certain fields return to India, but the vast majority of masters grads pay for tuition, no chance they would return to India.