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Supreme Court has said incidents of suicides in Indian Institutes of Technology and Indian Institutes of Management were extremely unfortunate and assured a robust mechanism to check such cases.
A bench of Justices Surya Kant and N Kotiswar Singh was informed by senior advocate Indira Jaising that in past 14 months, 18 suicides took place in Indian Institutes Technology (IITs) and Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs).
“It is extremely unfortunate what is happening. We will create a robust mechanism to check this situation. We will take this issue to the logical conclusion,” it said.
Jaising, appearing for the mothers of students Rohith Vemula and Payal Tadvi, who allegedly died by suicide after facing caste-based discrimination, said universities and colleges hadn’t given entire data on suicides taking place in their campuses despite a court order.
While Vemula, a PhD scholar at Hyderabad Central University died on January 17, 2016, Tadvi, a student at TN Topiwala National Medical College, died on May 22, 2019, after she was subjected to purported discrimination by three doctors in her college.
Solicitor general Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Centre, said the University Grants Commission (UGC) had formulated draft regulations, which took care of majority of the concerns raised by the petitioners, and were uploaded on its website inviting suggestions and objections from the public.
Jaising said 40 percent of the universities and 80 percent of the colleges had not created equal opportunity cells in their campuses.
The bench asked Jaising and other counsel appearing in the matter to give suggestions on the draft regulations and directed the UGC to look into these suggestions.
Jaising urged the court to give a hearing before finalisation of the regulations, but Mehta opposed it saying every other person would seek a personal hearing, if allowed.
“If they want to give any suggestions, then they can do so through the website but personal hearing cannot be allowed,” he submitted.
