Promised, but missing: Five years on, National Digital University reduced to a budget item, with no funds

Online Courses: Conspicuous in its absence from the union budget for 2026-27 was any allocation for the National Digital University (NDU). The finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced it four financial years ago and for several years after, decision-makers at the University Grants Commission and ministry spoke of it like its launch was imminent and the government continued to earmark funds for it. This year, both the funds and promises have stopped.

Even among the officials there is no clarity on the status of NDU, with some guessing that the existing MOOC platform, SWAYAM, is to be seen as the National Digital University. However, the original plan was clearly different.

The parliamentary panel on education , headed by Congress MP Digvijaya Singh, in a recent report also flagged the need for a “concrete, time-bound implementation roadmap”. In the meantime, states are launching their own digital universities. Officials feel the delay will only add to the confusion.

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Online Courses and a Digital University: The plan

In her 2022-23 budget speech, Sitharaman described the NDU thus: “ A digital university…to provide access to students across the country [with] world-class quality universal education with personalised learning experience at their doorsteps. This will be made available in different Indian languages and ICT formats. The university will be built on a networked hub-spoke model, with the hub building cutting edge ICT expertise. The best public universities and institutions in the country will collaborate as a network of hub-spokes.”

A year later, the progress report on the previous budget promises, divided the progress into two sub-heads, for the government think-tank NITI Aayog and and the department of higher education respectively. It said the following:

• NITI Aayog had been giving inputs to the ministry of education which was taking action on the budget announcement

• The department of higher education had formed an expert committee, with representation from technology, education, private and government sectors, regulators and university administrations, at UGC in March, 2022.

• Sub-committees were formed under this expert committee, to examine all aspects related to digital university.

• The chairman UGC had recommended starting degree programmes from academic session 2023-24, with emphasis on employability-oriented courses.

The document also listed details on how existing or in-development projects would dovetail into NDU.

• The national MOOC platform is being maintained by Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras. Samarth, an e-Governance platform for universities, developed at Delhi University, would be leveraged as the core platform for the Digital University

• SWAYAM and SAMARTH platforms would have to be integrated

• An e-governance framework for making universities or ed-tech platforms part of the

Digital University ecosystem was recommended

• The DPR and EFC – project and financial details – for Digital University was under review

• And that the UGC would frame regulations on governance, technology architecture and other details for the individual spokes.

M Jagadesh Kumar, the former UGC chairman, headed the Digital University project. Over the next few years and across interactions with the press, including an interview with Careers360 , he suggested the NDU’s launch was approaching. He told us in May, 2024 that it would be launched as “e-vishwavidyalaya” in the coming year.

“We aim to be the world’s largest online university. UGC aims to bring together top Indian institutions, industries and EdTech platforms to provide qualitative and affordable education to students,” he had said.

Neither he, nor the present UGC chairman and higher education secretary, Vineet Joshi, responded to questions for this story.

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National Digital University: Budget allocated, zero expenditure

The first allocation for the university was made in the revised budget of 2023-24. An amount of Rs 4 crore was allocated. Thereafter the budget saw a massive increase to Rs 100 crore in 2025-26, followed by drastic cuts.

The parliamentary panel has raised concerns about the lack of expenditure and the stalling of the project repeatedly.

In a 2025 report, it said: “The NDU has been set up with a low allocation of only Rs 25 crore for FY 2025-26. Keeping in view the Digital India programme and building on India’s successes in digital payments, there is a need to have a well-resourced digital university which becomes a benchmark globally as well….The committee recommends that the department should ensure that NDU courses have equivalency with degrees from traditional universities to enhance employability.”

In its report submitted on March 18 this year, it said: “The committee is of the view that a concrete, time-bound ,implementation roadmap may be submitted to the committee for its consideration at the earliest, covering the legal/regulatory framework, governance structure, technology platform, content partnerships, and learner enrolment targets.”

Online Degrees: UGC and ‘multi-rules’ problem

However, for all the prodding from the panel, even insiders at the UGC told Careers360 they are not aware of progress on the project. Meanwhile, states have announced their own projects.

One official, on condition of anonymity, said, “National Digital University, if it would have come up, would be an umbrella act. Now, in the absence of the umbrella act, the growth of meta regulations by states could create issues.” As the top regulator, UGC is the standard-setting body whose prescriptions states are obliged to follow.

In January this year, Punjab government announced the Punjab Private Digital Open Universities Policy 2026, where private institutions can set up fully digital universities to provide open and distance learning (ODL) programmes online.

The policy also frames eligibility criteria for private institutions to set up digital universities, which demand a minimum of 2.5 acres, digital content studios, server rooms, learning management system (LMS) operations centres, digital examination control rooms, 24x7 student support systems, and a minimum corpus fund of Rs 20 crore, as per a Press Trust of India report.

There is also the Digital University Kerala, which was established under The Kerala University of Digital Sciences, Innovation and Technology Act, 2021. But in this case, an existing information technology institute was upgraded into a digital university.

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Even national-level institutions are going it alone. The National Institute of Electronics and Information Technology (NIELIT) also launched the NIELIT Digital University (NDU) platform in 2025.

The statement from NIELIT had said, “The NDU platform is designed to democratise access to high-quality digital education. The platform will offer industry-focused programmes in niche technologies such as AI, cybersecurity, data science, semiconductors, and allied fields with flexible digital learning modes and virtual labs to equip students with future-ready skills.”

The digital universities are coming up without a central policy on them. “The then chairman Kumar had stated that these multi-rules problems would be sorted once the NDU came up. But then nothing has materialised so far,” an official added. Asked if the plan was to recast SWAYAM as NDU, they were unsure.

The NDU was originally conceived of as a separate project and more recently, the parliament panel, too, pushed for it to be “positioned as a complementary rather than competing platform to SWAYAM and Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU)”.