Legendary Charter Progression of Indian Engineering (original) (raw)

Self Regulation Authority for Engineers in India A Critical Analysis

VIEWPOINT, 2019

By self-regulatory authority of a profession is implied a select body of its members which is responsible for the growth and development of the profession in keeping with its responsibility towards the society and the State. The functions of such a body inter alia are: (i) issues of professional education, development of curriculum, setting up of teaching standards, institutional infrastructures, recognition of degrees, etc, and (ii) matters concerned with licensing and ethical conduct of the practitioners. Currently there are seven major self-regulating professional bodies operating in India. 1. Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) - formed under the Chartered Accountants Act, 1949. 2. Medical Council of India (MCI) – formed under Indian Medical Council Act, 1956. 3. Institute of Cost & Works Accountants of India (ICWAI) - formed under the Cost & Works Accountants Act, 1959. 4. Bar Council of India (BCI)-formed under Advocates Act, 1961. 5. Press Council of India (PCI) – formed under the Press Council Act, 1965. 6. Council of Architecture (CoA) – formed under the Architects Act, 1972, and the 7. Institute of Company Secretaries of India (ICSI) – formed under the Company Secretaries Act, 1980. Then, there are organizations like the Institution of Engineers (India) which have been formed purely by voluntary action by respective members of the profession but don’t have any statutory authority although they have a Royal Charter and its membership recognized and acknowledged by local bodies as being a prerequisite for being acknowledged as a professional engineer. One of the major tasks of self-regulatory authorities is to manage and regulate professional education. The National Knowledge Commission (NKC) which was constituted in 2005 with a mandate to prepare a blueprint for transforming the country into a knowledge society has gone into issues of higher education in the country (e.g. management, law, and medicine). One of its major recommendations was that Professional Education should be taken away from the domain of the existing Regulatory Bodies like UGC and AICTE and recommended a single independent regulatory authority for higher education, but at present the HRD Ministry has put the idea on hold.