The University Grant Commission (UGC) awakened after the Supreme Court hunted on Caste discrimination. Last month the Supreme Court called “Sensitive Matters,” after which UGC set up an expert panel to scrutinize its schemes. The UGC issued guidelines against caste discrimination in 2012 and asked HEIs to set up grievance redressal Cells. Students demanded to enact a “Rohith Act” against drop out and deaths grew rampantly.
The initiative has been taken after a case moved to the Supreme Court on the deaths of reserved category students in Higher Education Institutions. A senior official of UGC unrevealed, “An expert panel has been constituted for revisiting the UGC regulations and schemes concerning the SC, ST, OBC, PWD and minority communities in HEIs.”
Caste discrimination from the smallest units of education to top Central Universities, IITs, and IIMs has been practiced for years in every possible way either policy, regulations, taunting comments, abusive remarks, marking, admission procedures, killing, humiliating, Ragging, violating reservation policies, or through feudal partial mindset.
In 2012 the UGC passed a regulation, “Promotion of Equity in Higher Educational Institutions,” to check whether the reservation was fulfilled or not and asked HEIs strictly to establish grievance redressal cells to look out the discrimination cases. Through this rule, institutions were made forced to “prohibit the discrimination with SC/ST, and punish the victims who harass or humiliate any students based on their caste, creed, religion, language, ethnicity, gender or disability basis.” However, the cases of deaths and dropout rates of Sc/St have grown rampantly.
Between 2019-2023 25,675 students terminated their studies at IIT, IIM & CU. Among these, 17,545 sc/st/obc students under marginalized communities have dropped out of their studies from central Universities between 2029-2023. The number of reserved categories who have left their study from IITs and IIMs reached up to 8,139.
Recently one more Dalit student died, but the death of Dalits Rohith Vemula, Payal Tadavi & Darshan Solanki shook India, and huge masses covered the road through protests. Students across India asked to Enact “Rohith Act. A student organization, the voice of radical students’ movements “AISA” organized the protest across India against Rohith Vemula’s death in HCU.
The All India Students Association, Ambedkar Students Association with other social justice lover activists wrote several letters to UGC, PM, MHRD, Supreme Court, and the President of India to enact the “Rohith Act”, to ensure justice for the marginalized communities students. They also demanded there must be a Gender Sensitisation Committee Against Sexual Harassment (GSCASH) on every Campus as per Supreme Court order according to “Vishkha Guidelines.” The UGC website shows a designed frame to register the data on whether and how many cases have been tackled or solved. This form has to be filled out by the institutions. But Caste discrimination is unacknowledged intentionally by Institutions Administrators and goes common.
The SC/ST Cells have no representatives from their communities, and Complain Committee Against Sexual Harassment (CCASH) in institutions as per UGC’s Prevention of Sexual Harassment (PoSH) Act are out of either function or do not exist in many campuses.
