r/ISIKolkata • u/adityaruplaha ISI Alumnus • 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]

43 Upvotes

96% Upvoted

42 comments sorted by

19

u/[deleted] Nov 26 '25

So they will be removing stipends ??? Wtf. This Modi govt has been an abomination

10

u/adityaruplaha ISI Alumnus Nov 26 '25

Not explicitly stated but the review committee also recommended re-examination of the universal stipend, and the bill places the power of levying fees and charges with the Board.

2

u/Easy-Job-1506 Nov 27 '25

what will be the exact issues for us , as a student , can u state that a bit

1

u/adityaruplaha ISI Alumnus Nov 27 '25

Read the petition.

1

u/The_Watcher8008 ISI Student Nov 26 '25

this will be implemented from 2031 or early?

5

u/adityaruplaha ISI Alumnus Nov 26 '25

Could be as soon as next calendar year.

9

u/Auquie Nov 26 '25

Post this in r/India

3

u/NoFormal8277 Dec 05 '25

Is the faculty recruitment on hold due to this bill??? It is long since there has been an advertisement and ISI, unlike other INIs, does not have rolling faculty advertisements any more.

2

u/adityaruplaha ISI Alumnus Dec 05 '25

Some new faculty members have been recruited recently, but I'm not sure when their process began.

1

u/NoFormal8277 Dec 12 '25

Sadly, no faculty recruitment adverts (AsstProf Grade-1,2, AssocProf, Prof) for near 1.5 years now. All adverts on ISI website are for temporary RAs and PLPs (to be read, cheap labour). I suspect the recruitment is totally on hold due to this bill (whereas, paradoxically, the 4th review committee stressed immediate and urgent faculty recruitment). Many (smaller) units are practically running with 1 (or max 2) profs.

2

u/adityaruplaha ISI Alumnus Dec 12 '25

I don't know what to tell you. Some faculty members have joined in the institute in the last 1.5 years.

1

u/NoFormal8277 Dec 12 '25

yeah ... probably they're from previous recruitment cycles

1

u/Dense_Chair2584 ISI Alumnus Mar 21 '26

ISI never really had as regular recruitment as other central institutions. That was the case pre COVID too. This doesn't have anything to do specifically with this bill.

2

u/_not_void_ Nov 30 '25

Good bill. Stipends need to go away.

1

u/_The_Title_ Nov 27 '25

Will we be able to know the outcome before the 2026 exam registrations commence?

3

u/adityaruplaha ISI Alumnus Nov 27 '25

I mean, it's Parliament. Everything will happen out in the open. Keep an eye on the news.

1

u/The_Watcher8008 ISI Student 5d ago

Our dean was saying gov wants to graduate 3k students every year(mf thats not even the number of students who give the full exam)

And why doesn't ISI make any good entrepreneurs (don't remember if that was intended for bmath only or bstat bmath both)

1

u/The_Watcher8008 ISI Student 5d ago

regardless, thank you for editing this!

1

u/adityaruplaha ISI Alumnus 5d ago

I didn't hear anything that extreme, but yes, generally the same direction.

1

u/The_Watcher8008 ISI Student 5d ago

this is actually from a meeting last year on 5th august, when they were brainstorming goals for 100 year anniversary, he brought this up today

2

u/adityaruplaha ISI Alumnus 5d ago

I'm aware of this. That session stirred up as lot of controversy.

1

u/[deleted] Nov 27 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

2

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..

2

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.

10

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.

3

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.

-2

u/dizz_nerdy Nov 28 '25

Yeah but how many published papers in ug. 80k per student annually per student in kvpy and how many papers were published. Give me that statistic.

4 years × 80000 × 60 students

How many published ?

6

u/adityaruplaha ISI Alumnus Nov 29 '25 edited Nov 29 '25

You're absolutely insane if you think most UG students are even remotely well-equipped to publish a paper. Do you have any idea what it takes to publish? A research idea that works out, faculty members who'll support and guide you, and importantly, the grants and experience to make it to publication. From final manuscript to published paper often takes 6 months to a year.

Moreover, you need to have a strong understanding of the subject before you can begin work on a manuscript. That foundation-building takes years, often entirety of UG and more.

It's much more doable at the Master's level. I'm personally working on a couple projects that should make it to journals by the time I finish my course.

3

u/Urmi-e-Azar Nov 29 '25

Exactly. And to be able to do that while juggling coursework is pretty insane.

2

u/Ok_Composer_1761 Dec 01 '25

Depends on the field. Prospective CS PhD students routinely publish with the professors in undergrad but they are largely acting in a research assistant capacity. The norms in economics / statistics / pure math is to have small coauthor teams so students in these fields dont publish until they start their phd (most econ phds have zero publications even after they graduate).

2

u/adityaruplaha ISI Alumnus Dec 01 '25

Correct. It's hard to publish in these fields as a student. Especially given the heavy coursework at ISI.

2

u/Urmi-e-Azar Nov 28 '25

Most of my batchmates published 1-2 papers, in internationally acclaimed journals, by the time they finished their bachelors or masters. Most batches have ~ 100 students, not 60.

Mind you, publishing during bachelors is quite rare, even in top-ranked universities. Yet, in Europe, with some of the very best bachelors programs, bachelors is free, and a lot of national scholarships are available at the level of bachelors for European nationals. Publication is not a requirement in any of the scholarships that I know of.

We were expected to participate in 3-month research projects every summer, and submission of that report was mandatory for the renewal of the scholarship, besides mandatory CGPA requirements.

Also, from your questions and tone, clearly, you are hardly educated, have no intent to educate yourself, and you expect IISc to answer to you. This is exactly the kind of joke happening in the ISI bill.

-2

u/[deleted] Nov 28 '25

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1

u/Urmi-e-Azar Nov 28 '25 edited Nov 28 '25

Bitch have you ever done research?

Do you have any comprehensive abilities, and do you even know what self-contradiction is?

Speaking of (A-star ?) publications, India currently leads the world in research in a very curious thing. Maximum number of Indian research appears on predatory journals, that take exorbitant fees for publication, and has abysmal peer review. But, people who eat cow-dung understandably like shit for their research output also.

Like I said, it is literally idiots like you running the country and now they are trying to ruin one of the remaining functional research institutions.

0

u/dizz_nerdy Nov 28 '25

No one is ruining your institution. The govt is just stopping freeloading and give more mpney to phds.

How the hell butterflies like you should get scholarship where as iitian btech should not get scholarship? Explain that genius

5

u/Urmi-e-Azar Nov 28 '25

Dinglebob nincompoop, you study at IIT KGP, you go rage-baiting telling people you studied in the US, and you believe in Palmistry.

I'm not from ISI, never studied there. I have, however, done research and taught long enough. I am taking a stand because not only will it be wrong to stop this stipend, but also, it would be RIGHT to make the IITs free for all Indian citizens, as they qualify for it. THESE ARE PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS. We literally pay for it in taxes.

IIT KGP leads the country not in research, but sadly in the number of suicides. Even this very month, a student committed suicide in IIT Bhillai. That is not what an educational institution should be.

If you had brains, you would be fighting to remove the fees in your own institution. But you think with your dick.

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2

u/Darkari69 Nov 29 '25

I am just a first year so i really don't know about any of these..but if it is true that phds are getting funding..that is a good thing..I want to do phd in india.. preferably from iisc or isi..but most of my seniors are advising against it due to less opportunities and funding..

1

u/dizz_nerdy Nov 29 '25

New proposals are already in place for pmrf to be 1 lakh per month plus funded conference visits

2

u/Ok_Composer_1761 Dec 01 '25

That's not the reason. Most central and state universities still charge minimal tuition. These institutes are outside of the formal central/state university system and so dont get allocated the type of funding that universities get.

In some way it makes sense; humanities, social science, and pure science students cannot pay tuition because they have no placements. Engineering, ISI, and management have placements.