Coming, checks on ragging

The University Grants Commission has decided to notify new guidelines to make it binding on all higher educational institutions to prevent ragging or face harsh action, including de-recognition, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Mar 17, 2009, 23:58:01 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The University Grants Commission (UGC) has decided to notify new guidelines to make it binding on all higher educational institutions to prevent ragging or face harsh action, including de-recognition.

The commission has decided to notify guidelines to prevent ragging under the UGC Act, 1956, making it mandatory for institutions to adopt them. “Its violation will result in penal action against the institution concerned,” said UGC secretary R.K. Chauhan.

The commission is considering new clauses to get itself empowered to stop grants to those institutions, which fail to prevent ragging, as suggested by the Supreme Court on Monday.

In case of repeated cases of ragging, commission officials, who did not wish to be named, said the offending institution could be de-recognised under the UGC Act.

“We have formed a committee that will consider different options for making the anti-ragging guidelines effective. The new guidelines will be notified before the next academic year,” Chauhan told Hindustan Times.

The UGC decision comes following the death of Aman Kachuroo, a medical student, because of ragging in Himachal Pradesh. During the past year, ragging cases have been reported from various institutions, but no police action has been initiated against the culprits.

“In Kolapur University, some senior students were suspended, but no action was taken against the teachers who helped them conduct ragging during teaching hours,” said Sheila Parsa, who conducted an inquiry into the ragging of 50 first-year Masters of Computer Application (MCA) students in the University.

After examining several cases, she felt that there was a need to overhaul the system.

“Ragging is considered a tradition in many institutions. This mindset needs to be changed,” she said, pointing out that the UGC guidelines enforced in 1999 had failed to change the institutions’ ways of handling ragging cases.

n UGC says violation of rules may result in penal action
n Threatens to stop grants, even de-recognise institutes

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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