Pralhad Joshi Opens New NIEPA Academic Building in Delhi

Union Minister for Education Pralhad Joshi inaugurated the new Academic Building and the Main Entrance Gate of the National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration (NIEPA) in New Delhi on 29 October 2026. He said the new building would let the institute scale up the programmes it runs at home and abroad and would strengthen what it can do in teaching and research.

Why the building matters

The minister used a Sanskrit line, Shariramadyam khalu dharma sadhanam, which holds that a healthy body is needed before one can discharge one's duties, to argue that sound infrastructure is in the same way needed before important work can be carried out well. The building dedicated that day, he said, would widen the institute's room to act, and he added that there is a growing need to move faster on this work.

NIEPA and the education policy

The minister set out the institute's part in the National Education Policy of 2020. NIEPA tracks how the policy is being put into practice, finds out where the difficulties lie and works with state governments to settle them. He also pressed the point that teaching has to move away from learning by rote and towards an understanding of concepts, which is what the policy itself envisages.

Schemes and platforms cited

• PM Vidyalaxmi Scheme, under which soft loans worth Rs 60,000 crore have been made available for higher education.
• SWAYAM, the digital learning platform, which the minister said has widened access to good quality digital learning and to educational resources for students across the country.
• DIKSHA, the other digital learning platform he named alongside it.

He returned to the theme that young people have to be given both a quality education and skills that answer to what the country and the wider world need, so that India is able to contribute more to the welfare of the world.

Who was present

The Secretary of the Department of Higher Education, Deepti Gaur Mukherjee, was present at the function. So were the Chancellor of NIEPA, Prof. Rama Shanker Dubey, and the Vice-Chancellor of the institute, Prof. Shashikala Wanjari. For an examination candidate the points worth carrying away are the full name of the institute, the ministry it belongs to, the minister who opened the building, the names of its Chancellor and Vice-Chancellor, the institute's monitoring role under the 2020 policy and the figure of Rs 60,000 crore attached to the PM Vidyalaxmi Scheme.