Parliament passes School of Planning and Architecture Bill

New Delhi, December 11: Parliament Wednesday passed a bill to convert three Schools of Planning and Architecture into centres of excellence and enable them to confer degrees on students. The School of Planning and Architecture Bill, 2014, which has already been passed by Lok Sabha, was passed by Rajya Sabha Wednesday.

Its passage will benefit students of SPA Bhopal and Vijayawada who are still awaiting their degrees. These two institutes were set up in 2008-09. The third SPA is in Delhi. In order to confer degrees, an institute has to be made a deemed university by an act of parliament.

The bill also proposes to set up a council for the SPAs similar to Indian Institutes of Technology and National Institutes of Technology to advise the central government on policy matters in the field of architecture and planning.

IANS