Uttarakhand HC directs state govt to submit affidavit on anti-ragging committees

The high court has also directed the state government to disclose, whether or not, the district level committees have been constituted

Uttarakhand high court has directed the state government to submit an affidavit within six weeks on whether anti-ragging committee have been constituted in educational institutes in the state at graduate, post-graduate, and professional level.

The next hearing in the case has been fixed for June 6, 2023. (Representative file image)

The high court has also directed the state government to disclose, whether or not, the district level committees have been constituted. If not, the same should be constituted within the next two weeks, the HC ordered.

The directions were issued by a division bench of chief justice Vipin Sanghi and justice Alok Kumar Verma while hearing a PIL filed by Haridwar-based Sachidanand Dabral against the ragging incident in which 27 MBBS first-year students’ heads were tonsured in Susheela Tiwari Government Medical College Haldwani.

The HC has also directed the Centre, National Medical Commission and University Grants Commission (UGC), to collect information from institutions over which they exercise supervision, with regard to the constitution of the ragging monitoring cells in the institutions and submit the same before the HC.

The HC in its order maintained that according to UGC’s Regulations on Curbing the Menace of Ragging in Higher Educational Institutions, 2009, the responsibility for preventing and curbing the activity of ragging is on the head of the institution concerned and in each institution, an anti-ragging committee is required to be formed and headed by the head of the institution, which consists of representatives of civil and police administration, local media, non-government organisations involved in youth activities, representatives of faculty members, representatives of parents, representatives of students belonging to the freshers’ category, as well as senior students and non-teaching staff.

The HC order stated, “We put the heads of all graduate level, post-graduate level, and professional institutions in the state to notice, that non-compliance of the aforesaid regulations shall be viewed seriously, and the head of the institution concerned, wherever acts of ragging are found to be occurring shall be held responsible”.

In March last year, a video of 27 tonsured MBBS first-year students of Susheela Tiwari Government Medical College Haldwani had gone viral, after which a probe was ordered by the college into the ragging incident.

In the video, a group of first-year MBBS students from Haldwani medical college were seen moving outside the building of the medical college, with their heads tonsured.