SC - Students involved in Ragging should be expelled

Coming down heavily on ragging in colleges, the Supreme Court Monday said its directions issued in May on the menace should be extended to include private, unaided colleges and professional educational institutes as well.

Supreme Court on Monday directed educational institutions to adopt a "zero tolerance" policy to ragging and expel students found guilty of maltreating freshers.

A bench of Justices Arijit Pasayat and Aftab Alam said that ragging is plaguing not merely government educational institutions but private educational institutions too and there is no reason why it should be not curbed.

It asked the central and state governments to implement the court's earlier directions to arrest the menace of ragging in private educational institutions, including professional colleges on medicine, engineering, dental science, management, pharmacy and agriculture.

The court directed bodies like the Medical Council of India, Dental Council of India and Bar Council of India to suggest guidelines to it to curtail ragging of junior students by seniors.

It asked educational institutions to include a condition and warning in their admission forms saying that any student found indulging in ragging would be expelled after being given a chance to explain his act.

The bench lambasted the government saying that its earlier directions to do away with ragging did not appear to have made any dent in the situation owing to lack of action by the government.

It asked Additional Solicitor General Gopal Subramanian, who is assisting the court in the matter as amicus curie, to file a fresh status report on its earlier directions for implementation of the Ragahvan Committee report to check ragging in educational institutions.

In its directions in May, the court had said ragging, which sometimes involves violence, abuse and even sexual harassment, is unacceptable and deserves severe punishment.