SC notice to UGC, governments on caste bias in varsities

NEW DELHI:The Supreme Court has issued notices to the Centre, state governments and education regulatory bodies such as UGC and NAAC on a petition that has alleged educational institutions have failed to prevent caste discrimination, leading to suicide of students such as Rohith Vemula and Payal Tadvi.

Vemula and Tadvi committed suicide after sustained caste discrimination. Their mothers have now joined hands to move the ask the Supreme Court to ensure a more rigorous regime to check caste-based harassment in universities. The petition filed by advocate Sunil Fernandes came up before a bench led by Justice NV Ramana. Appearing for the petitioner, advocate Indira Jaising contended that though UGC regulations of 2012 provided for a mechanism known as the equity commission, most institutions have failed to make them functional. Jaising contended that regulations were not implemented in letter and spirit, leading to unfortunate consequences.

Citing an RTI reply, the petition claimed that the number of institutions not complying with the regulations were rising every year, but nothing had been done by the regulatory bodies to ensure compliance. In 2015-16, 166 of the 800 odd universities replied to the UGC’s direction to submit an action taken report to implement the guidelines. This number shot up to 419 from 880 universities in 2017-18, it claimed. Despite inaction, the UGC was yet to act against them, it claimed.


The petition also pointed out several inadequacies in the equity regulations which mandates everyone not to discriminate against students from the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe communities.