Masters Union Wins University Status as Gurugram Police Bust US-Targeting Call Centre Fraud
Gurugram made education headlines this week as the Haryana Legislative Assembly passed the bill formalising Masters Union as a full university, a milestone for the six-year-old practitioner-led institution. Separately, the Haryana State Information Commission fined a prominent civic official for stonewalling a transparency request over four years. City police also dismantled a fraudulent call centre whose operators were targeting American citizens.
🎓 Haryana Grants University Status to Masters Union in Gurugram
The Haryana Legislative Assembly has passed the Haryana Private Universities (Amendment) Bill, 2026, formally establishing Masters Union University in Gurugram. The move comes six years after the Gurgaon-based institution first launched its practitioner-led model of higher education, which centres on learning directly from working business leaders and industry professionals rather than from textbook-focused academics. The new university will be anchored on a site covering approximately 5.14 acres of contiguous land in Gurugram, with an existing built area of roughly 1.07 lakh square feet. Of that, some 96,600 square feet is dedicated instructional space, and the broader campus plan envisions accelerator zones, venture-building facilities, maker labs, analytics infrastructure, student residences, and sporting and cultural amenities. Founder Pratham Mittal noted that in an era when access to information is no longer a limiting factor, the real competitive edge comes from knowing how to frame problems, make decisions under uncertainty, and build practical solutions from the ground up. Mittal described the university designation as an opportunity to extend this hands-on model to newer disciplines and to serve a far larger student community across India. Since its launch, the institution has backed more than 80 student startups through its Venture Initiation Programme and related initiatives, embedding entrepreneurial practice at the core of the curriculum rather than treating it as an optional extracurricular activity. [4]
🗳️ Haryana Fines Town Planner RS Batth Rs 25,000 for Four-Year RTI Block
The Haryana State Information Commission has imposed a fine of Rs 25,000 on Gurugram's District Town Planner, an official who has attracted considerable attention in recent years for aggressive action against illegal construction, encroachments, and unauthorised occupations across the city. The commission took a serious view of his conduct in failing to respond properly to a Right to Information request over a period of four years, and directed that the fine be deposited within three months, with the concerned department instructed to ensure that the amount is actually recovered. In addition to the financial penalty, the commission has recommended to the Additional Chief Secretary of Haryana that the officer, RS Batth, undergo formal training in the discharge of official duties at the Haryana Institute of Public Administration or at another suitable institution. The case draws attention to the tension between an official celebrated locally as a demolition man for his decisive clearance of illegal structures and his apparent resistance to fulfilling basic transparency obligations under the RTI framework. The commission's dual action, a direct financial penalty alongside a recommendation for capacity-building training, reflects growing insistence at the state level that all public servants, regardless of their operational record, must remain accountable to citizens seeking information through lawful channels. [5]
Gurugram Police Dismantle Fake Call Centre Defrauding US Citizens, Arrest 11
The Cyber Crime West police station team in Gurugram conducted a successful raid and dismantled an unauthorized call centre that had been operating a scheme to defraud citizens of the United States, arresting eleven accused persons in the process. The bust is part of a broader pattern of enforcement activity in Gurugram's cybercrime units, which have increasingly focused on fraudulent call centres operating in the Haryana technology and business hub. Such operations typically involve agents impersonating technical support staff, government agencies, or financial institutions in order to extract money or sensitive personal information from unsuspecting foreign targets. Gurugram, as one of India's largest concentrations of business process outsourcing and information technology companies, has become a recurring site of both legitimate call centre industry activity and the criminal enterprises that sometimes operate alongside it. The arrest of eleven individuals in a single raid signals continued pressure by local law enforcement on these illegal operations, which damage both the individuals targeted abroad and the broader reputation of the city's legitimate technology and services sector. Authorities indicated the raid was carried out by the Cyber Crime West team operating out of Gurugram, and the case is expected to proceed with formal charges against those detained as the investigation continues. [9]
Sources: [4] Education Times · [5] business-standard.com · [9] ANI News