NEW DELHI: Around 98 students have taken their lives in premier educational institutes since 2018, of which 39 were from IITs, 25 from NITs, 25 from central universities, four from IIMs, but educational institutions do not seem serious about the problem as 57,000 educational institutes including most of the IITs, IIMs, AIIMSs and NITs are not cooperating and participating in the survey being conducted by an apex court-appointed panel to deal with the problem of suicides on campuses.Supreme Court said it was thoroughly disappointed with the lack of response from the institutes.Senior advocate Aparna Bhat, who is assisting the court as amicus curiae, told a bench of Justices J B Pardiwala and R Mahadevan that the list of non-cooperating institutes include 17 IITs, 15 IIMs, 16 AIIMS and 24 NITs which have not responded to the survey despite being reminded four times. The survey was being done on the direction of court to find out the causes and remedies for increasing number of suicides in educational institutions. She informed the apex court that only 3,500 odd institutes have so far responded. “This entire exercise is being undertaken in the interest of the students and it is expected of all these institutes to render their full cooperation and assistance to enable the National Task Force to finalise its interim report, if not final, on the subject,” the bench said. The bench noted that the Centre had four times informed all these institutes to cooperate in the survey but till date “there has been no response at their end”. Noting that it is very important for all these institutes to cooperate and join the survey to tackle the problem, the bench directed the Centre to again inform all these institutes. “We request the Union of India to once again take up this issue very seriously and impress upon all these institutes to cooperate,” it said.Senior advocate Harish Salve, who was waiting for his case, volunteered in larger interest of the students to take up the issue with all the IITs across the country and impress upon them to join the survey and render their cooperation to the National Task Force and the court appreciated his gesture.”We would like to give one last opportunity to all these institutes to cooperate and join the survey, failing which we may have to pass some orders which the institutes may not like and may bring a bad name to the respective institutes. Let the aforesaid aspect be made clear by the Union of India to all the institutes while issuing the circular,” the bench said in its order.SC had appointed a multi-disciplinary task force headed by its retired judge Ravindra Bhat to analyse and suggest measures to prevent suicides on campuses. The high-level panel, comprised of experts from various fields including psychiatry and clinical psychology, has been tasked with identifying various causes which lead to suicides by students: including but not limited to ragging, caste-based discrimination, gender-based discrimination, sexual harassment, academic pressure, financial burden, mental health related stigma, discrimination based on ethnicity, tribal identity, disability, sexual orientation, political views, religious belief or any other grounds.SC also took note of amicus report on delay of scholarship to scheduled castes students and sought response from the Centre. “We would like to know why there is a delay in disbursing the scholarship amount to the students once the application for the same is sanctioned,” it said. Go to Source
