Reconfiguring Regulatory Governance in Indian Higher Education: A Critical Review of the Higher Education Commission of India (HECI) Bill, 2025

India's higher education system has expanded rapidly over the past three decades, yet it continues to face persistent challenges related to fragmented regulation, uneven quality assurance, limited outcome transparency and constrained institutional autonomy. The proposed Higher Education Commission of India (HECI) Bill, 2025, emerging from the reform agenda articulated in the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, seeks to address these challenges through the creation of a unified yet functionally differentiated regulatory architecture. This review paper provides a comprehensive and critical analysis of the HECI Bill by examining its historical evolution from the Draft HECI Bill of 2018, its governance design, policy rationale, stakeholder expectations and implementation risks. Drawing on policy documents, expert committee reports, parliamentary debates and comparative international literature, the paper evaluates the Bill's implications for regulatory coherence, federal balance, institutional autonomy, accreditation capacity and funding equity. The review argues that while the HECI framework has the potential to improve transparency, accountability and outcome-oriented governance, its effectiveness will depend critically on cooperative Centre?State relations, institutional capacity-building, robust digital infrastructure, transparent funding mechanisms and safeguards for academic pluralism. The paper contributes to scholarly debates on higher education governance in large federal systems and offers policy-relevant insights for regulators, institutions and researchers.