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Draft legislation seeks to regulate engineers
The AICTE is finalizing the Professional Engineers Bill, 2025, to regulate engineers in India, establishing a licensing system and a new council.
New Delhi: The All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) will soon finalise the draft of the Professional Engineers Bill, 2025, which seeks to regulate the engineering profession by requiring engineers to register with a statutory body, officials aware of the development said on Thursday, adding that the bill is likely to be presented in the upcoming winter session of Parliament.
The bill proposes the establishment of a 27-member Indian Professional Engineers’ Council (IPEC) to register qualified engineers—similar to existing regulatory councils for lawyers, doctors, and pharmacists.
Once enacted, it will introduce a national licensing system to enhance professional accountability and ensure uniform standards across the engineering sector.
The draft legislation, prepared by an AICTE expert committee chaired by MS Ananth, former director of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras, was opened for stakeholder feedback between March 19 and April 10. “We have received lots of suggestions. A meeting will be held next week to discuss the suggestions and finalise the draft. After that the bill will be sent to the education ministry and may be presented in the upcoming session of Parliament,” a senior AICTE official said.
The winter session of Parliament is expected to be held from December 1 to 19.
Former AICTE member secretary Rajive Kumar, who served on the expert committee that drafted the first version of the Bill, said deliberations began in the council about six to seven years ago after it was realised that engineering was the only major profession in India without a licensing or registration system, unlike medicine, law, or architecture.
The proposed law, he added, aims to establish a framework to identify, certify, and regulate practising engineers, ensuring accountability and higher professional standards.
Kumar clarified that those entering teaching or academic roles in engineering will not be required to register under the proposed law. “If someone is coming into teaching — for example, a civil engineer joining as a faculty member — they would not need registration. But if the same civil engineer wants to work on a construction project, then registration under the Professional Engineers Bill will be required, once the bill becomes law,” he said.
Kumar explained that a statutory body – IPEC – will be created to oversee registration, continuous training, and certification in emerging technologies. “Practising engineers will be given adequate time—five to ten years—for registration. It will not be implemented abruptly,” he added.
The proposed IPEC will have 27 members for its first three-year term—16 nominated by the Board and 11 representatives from professional engineering organisations. The nominated members will include officials from the ministry of education, major engineering-related ministries, academic institutions such as IITs and National Institute of Technology (NITs), state governments, and industry bodies like Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI). The affiliate members will represent leading professional associations including the Institution of Engineers (India), the Indian National Academy of Engineering, and others by rotation.
In April, Indian Society of Structural Engineers (ISSE), a professional body with over 3,000 civil engineers across India, wrote to AICTE demanding minimum two permanent seats for ISSE in IPEC.
According to the draft of the bill, a 12-member board of governors will oversee the IPEC, comprising senior government officials, heads of premier institutions, and eminent practitioners from civil and other engineering fields. The board will be chaired by a distinguished professional with at least 25 years of experience, selected by a five-member search-cum-selection committee.
AICTE has over 5,800 affiliated engineering and diploma colleges with over 30 lakh students studying in them.
