New Delhi   

‘Apex court ruling on ragging largely ignored'

NEW DELHI: As the commemoration of the first death anniversary of Aman Kachroo, who died last year in a ragging incident in a Himachal Pradesh-based medical college took place here over the weekend, the victim's father Dr. Rajender Kachroo said the 2009 Supreme Court order to introduce measures to curb ragging had been largely ignored.

Dr. Rajender Kachroo had launched the Aman Movement to combat ragging after the incident.

Strongly condemning the tardy implementation of measures, Dr. Kachroo said: “Every line of the Supreme Court order has been abandoned. There is no shortage of money, techniques or technology to implement the measures. There is a legal order too.”

Yet because certain wrong agencies had been given responsibility, the implementation of the recommendations was yet to happen effectively, he added.

Dr. Kachroo's recommendations were cited in a May 2009 Supreme Court order. Broadly the recommendations include a data base of all college students and their parents in the country, a call centre connected to a data base containing contact information of all principals, anti-ragging committees, local police and the local press and a non-government organisation that would monitor and ensure that all regulations of the regulatory authorities were followed.

The plan was heard by the Raghavan Committee in 2009 and then improved and approved for implementation by all regulatory bodies, including the University Grants Commission. It was then reviewed by a committee of lawyers and by a team of technology experts before it was submitted to the Supreme Court. The court ordered its implementation on May 8.

According to Dr. Kachroo, while a call centre has been established, work on the database and the nomination of an NGO is yet to begin.

Even the quality of the call centre which was inaugurated in June 2009 was abysmal, Dr. Kachroo has alleged. Till December end, 300 complaints were recorded despite it being difficult to record a complaint with the call centre. Of these, 180 complaints were forwarded by UGC to college principals through ordinary post. Only 60 principals had responded. None of the bodies had reportedly examined the responses. Other complaints numbering about 120 were waiting to be looked at the end of January 2010, months after they were registered.

Dr. Kachroo has alleged that the UGC entrusted the task of establishing a call centre to a company which was not equipped to do so. Despite the Supreme Court order to nominate a monitoring agency immediately, nine months had passed without progress on this front. An advertisement had been placed a few months ago and applications were received, but no decision had been taken so far.

Work on acquiring of data for the database was still pending. A call centre without a monitoring agency and data backup could not do the job, according to Dr. Kachroo. The three were interlinked and could not operate exclusively.

Public confidence had been betrayed due to the inaction by the authorities.

“We are not going to give up in our efforts to get the recommendations implemented. If absolutely necessary, we are prepared to go to court and speak to officials concerned,” Dr. Kachroo said.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section

IGNOU workshop for bilingual dictionaries
Celebrating womanhood: from pain to power
National security meet in Haridwar
A tribute to women
Migratory bird count falls sharply in Delhi
Special arrangement at Metro station for Games
Forest Dept. to supply one million potted plants for Games
A reunion to remember….
Inside Delhi
Sulabh not to run MCD toilets
‘Apex court ruling on ragging largely ignored'
MCOCA invoked against self-styled godman
23-year-old commits suicide
Police remand for blasts accused
In the capital today

Copyright © 2010, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu