Proposed new legislation in Delhi would open up the heart of India’s capital city to private campuses, increasing competition as more foreign universities plot ways into the country.

A draft private university bill has been approved by the Delhi cabinet, described as the beginning of a new era of higher education by chief minister of Delhi, Rekha Gupta.

If it passes the city’s legislative assembly, it will establish a legal framework to build new private universities in Delhi.

Until now, new campuses have been built only on the outskirts of Delhi, in neighbouring states such as Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, which have their own private university acts and have leveraged their proximity to the capital to attract students.

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For example, the University of Southampton’s Delhi campus – which was the first of the new sites to open in 2025 – is actually in Gurugram, located southwest of Delhi and part of the Delhi National Capital Region.

Eldho Mathews, programme officer at Kerala State Higher Education Council, said that “a significant number” of Delhi students currently move to neighbouring cities to pursue higher education.

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The draft bill poses a challenge for these adjoining states because establishing private universities in Delhi “could help retain a larger share of this student population” within the capital, Mathews said.

Under the proposed legislation, 25 per cent of places in every course will be reserved for Delhi students.

It also establishes the Delhi Private Universities Regulatory Authority, which will monitor teaching standards, research, governance, examinations and overall university performance. 

Private universities in Delhi could prove more popular than those based further away, Mathews said, because of the capital’s proximity to national institutions, central ministries, thinktanks, multinational corporations and major research organisations.

This “provides a significant advantage for developing strong research, policy, innovation and industry linkages”, he said.

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However, given that Delhi is the world’s second most populous city, with a density exceeding 11,000 people per square kilometre, there are questions about whether there will be enough space for more campuses.

Any new private universities in Delhi will also face competition from established institutions such as the University of Delhi, Jawaharlal Nehru University and IIT Delhi.

Mathews said that, confronted by the spatial squeeze, new private universities might need to develop “vertically integrated campus models” rather than traditional land-based campus models.

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Rahul Choudaha, director of DrEducation Research, agreed that the move would increase competition for campuses on the outskirts of the city.

He said it would “put pressure on institutions that had, until now, treated Noida and Gurugram as the default entry points into the region”.

Alongside Southampton, Australia’s Victoria University has also established a campus in Gurugram, and Choudaha said that any first-mover advantage it might have enjoyed “narrows the moment a comparable foreign university sets up inside Delhi proper”.

Hubs such as Noida and Gurugram “can’t match” Delhi’s geographic centrality, he said.

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rosalind.skillen@timeshighereducation