Bills await poll result: Shashi Tharoor

Chennai: Minister of State for Human Resource Development (HRD) Shashi Tha­roor on Wednesday lam­ented that several bills, including the ones from HRD which the Union government had drafted in the last couple of ye­ars lie unattended and would not get passed by Parli­ament as the last winter session of the UPA gov­e­rnment would function only for two weeks.

He said that there were no plans in the XIIth five-year plan to start new IIT in any part of the country including Kerala. Respo­nding to questions after delivering the convocation address at Sri Rama­chandra University here, Tharoor said the bills are in various stages of consideration, some have not passed the parliamentary standing committees and some others have been passed by them, but not been introduced in Parliament.

“You know that in the last couple of years several sessions of Parliament were disrupted as result of which every ministry has bills pending in the House and the ministry of parliamentary affairs has a big challenge to put bills in the queue in the available time. I am not optimistic that any of the bills is likely to make it; even the winter session is going to be a two-week one from December 5 to 20. These bills need to wait for the post el­e­ction scenario,” he said.

Asked about US ambassador Nancy Po­well’s comment that rape fears had kept US students away from India, the HRD minister was of the opinion that it was the responsibility of the government to provide security to all students whether it is Indian or foreign.

Reiterating the Plan­ning Commission’s sta­nce for an IIT in Kerala, Tharoor said that in the last five-year-plan Union government started several IITs, but Kerala was not among them. “In the current five-year- plan too no new IIT have been authorised by the commission nor the Un­ion cabinet,” he noted.