New Delhi — Foreign universities that want to come to India should be regulated by a proposed Higher Education Commission, a high-level Indian higher-education reform committee will recommend, according to news reports.

Members of the panel said they were not against the entry of foreign universities, The Times of India newspaper reported, but they wanted to ensure that the institutions served India’s interests and were not just seeking to make a profit.

“We don’t want just any university to come here with its old or new material and equipment,” said Yash Pal, chairman of the committee. “Like home universities, foreign entrants will have to be accredited by the country’s rating agency,” said Mr. Pal, a physicist and former chairman of India’s higher-education regulatory group, the University Grants Commission.

Another committee member, Apoorva Anand, said members are not keen on the idea of “just importing” a university. “It has to grow in organic connection with the soil and connect with the needs of the land.”

In comments quoted by another newspaper, the Daily News & Analysis, Mr. Pal said that India should scrutinize whether foreign universities were “looking at only the commercial aspect” and hoping to draw “a select few [students] who can afford hefty fees.”

Committee members have been holding discussions across the country with academics, whose feedback will be incorporated into a final report that will be submitted to the ministry in charge of higher education on April 30. In an interim report released last week, the committee proposed an umbrella body called the Higher Education Commission that would mainly look after curricular reforms and has recommended that myriad other regulators be divested of their academic functions.

The interim report, which scathingly criticized the higher-education ministry, was taken down from the ministry’s Web site minutes after it was uploaded, The Telegraph reported. “We developed cold feet,” an unnamed senior ministry official told the newspaper when asked why the report was removed. “The fear is wide public support for the massive changes suggested by the panel, which would make it very hard for the government to then ignore these recommendations,” the official added. The ministry has often been criticized for dragging its feet on reforms.

The committee’s other suggested reforms include asking the government not to meddle in the appointment of university heads and transforming the Indian Institutes of Technology into full-fledged universities, a move the institutes oppose. —Shailaja Neelakantan