Sub: Prevention and prohibition of Ragging in
technical Institutions, Universities including Deemed to be Universities
imparting technical education.
F.No. 37-3/Legal/AICTE/2009 – In exercise of the powers conferred under Section
23 read with Section 10 (b), (g), (p) and (q) of AICTE Act, 1987, the All India
Council for Technical Education, hereby makes the following Regulations:-
1. Short title and
commencement:-
(i) These
Regulations may be called the All India Council for Technical Education
(Prevention and Prohibition of Ragging in Technical Institutions, Universities
including Deemed to be Universities imparting technical education) Regulations
2009.
(ii)
They shall come into force on the date of the notification.
2. Objective:-
To root out ragging in all
its forms from technical institutions, Universities including deemed to be
Universities imparting technical education in the country by prohibiting it by
law, preventing its occurrence by following the provisions of these Regulations
and punishing those who indulge in ragging in spite of prohibition and
prevention as provided for in these Regulations and the appropriate law in
force.
3. Definitions:-
(a)
“Act” means the All India Council for Technical Education Act 1987 (52 of
1987);
(b)
“Technical Institution” means the institution of Government, Government
Aided and Private (self financing) institutions conducting the courses/programmes in the field technical education, training and
research in Engineering, Technology including MCA, Architecture, Town Planning,
Management, Pharmacy, Hotel Management & Catering Technology, Applied Arts
& Crafts and such other programmes and areas as
notified by the Council from time to time;
(c)
‘University” means a University defined under clause (f) of section 2 of the University
Grants Commission Act, 1956 and includes an institution deemed to be a
University under section 3 of that Act.
(d)
All other words and expressions used herein and not defined but defined
in the All India Council for Technical Education Act, 1987 (52 of 1987), shall
have the meanings respectively assigned to them in the said Act;
4.
Directions
of the Hon’ble Supreme Court of
“We have perused the
Report of the Committee constituted pursuant to this Court’s order to suggest
remedial measures to tackle with the problem of ragging in educational
institutions. An elaborate report has
been submitted by the Committee headed by Dr. R. K. Raghavan. According to the Committee, the following
factors need to be focused to tackle with the problem:-
1.
Primary responsibility for curbing ragging rests with academic
institutions themselves.
2.
Ragging adversely impacts the standards of higher education.
3.
Incentives should be available to institutions for curbing the menace and
there should be disincentives for failure to do so.
4.
Enrolment in academic pursuits or a campus life should not immunize any
adult citizen from penal provisions of the laws of the land.
5.
Ragging needs to be perceived as failure to inculcate human values from
the schooling stage.
6.
Behavioral patterns among students, particularly potential ‘raggers’, need to be identified.
7.
Measures against ragging must deter its recurrence.
8.
Concerned action is required at the level of the school, higher
educational institution, district administration,
University, State and Central Governments to make any curb effective.
9.
Media and the Civil Society should be involved in this exercise.
The Committee has made several
recommendations. For the present, we
feel that the following recommendations should be implemented without any
further lapse of time:-
1.
The punishment to be meted out has to be exemplary and justifiably harsh
to act as a deterrent against recurrence of such incidents.
2.
Every single incident of ragging where the victim or his parent/guardian
or the Head of Institution is not satisfied with the institutional arrangement
for action, a First Information Report must be filed without exception by the
institutional authorities with the local policy authorities. Any failure on the part of the institutional
authority or negligence or deliberate delay in lodging the FIR with the local
police shall be construed to be an act of culpable negligence on the part of
the institutional authority. If any
victim or his parent/guardian of ragging intends to file FIR directly with the
police, that will not absolve the institutional authority from the requirement of
filing the FIR.
3.
Courts should make an effort to ensure that cases involving ragging are
taken up on priority basis to send the correct message that ragging is not only
to be discouraged but also to be dealt with sternness.
5.
Various
Types of Ragging:- The Raghavan Committee constituted by the Hon’ble Supreme Court
has, inter-alia, mentioned the following types
of ragging:-
1.
Ragging has several aspects with, among others, psychological, social,
political, economic, cultural, and academic dimensions.
2.
Any act that prevents, disrupts or disturbs the regular academic activity
of a student should be considered with in the academics related aspect of
ragging; similarly, exploiting the services of a junior student for completing
the academic tasks assigned to an individual or a group of seniors is also an
aspect of academics related ragging prevalent in many institutions,
particularly in the technical institutions.
3.
Any act of financial extortion or forceful expenditure burden put on a
junior student by senior students should be considered an aspect of ragging for
ragging economic dimensions.
4.
Any act of physical abuse including all variants of it: sexual abuse,
homosexual assaults, stripping, forcing obscene and lewd acts, gestured,
causing bodily harm or any other danger to health or person can be put in the
category of ragging with criminal dimensions.
5.
Any act or abuse by spoken words, emails, snail-mails, blogs, public insults should be considered with in the
psychological aspects of ragging. This
aspect would also include deriving perverted pleasure, vicarious or sadistic
thrill from actively or passively participating in the discomfiture to others;
the absence of preparing ‘freshers’ in the run up to their admission to
higher education and life in hostels also can be ascribed as a psychological
aspect of ragging – coping skills in interaction with seniors or strangers can
be imparted by parents as well. Any act
that affects the mental health and self-confidence of students also can be
described in terms of the psychological aspects of ragging.
6.
The political aspect of ragging is apparent from the fact that incidents
of ragging are low in institutions which promote democratic participation of
students in representation and provide an identity to students to participate
inn governance and decision making within the institute bodies.
7.
The human rights perspective of ragging involves the injury caused to the
fundamental right to human dignity through humiliation heaped on junior
students by seniors; often resulting in the extreme step of suicide by the
victims.
8. Actions to be taken
against students for indulging and abetting in Ragging in technical
institutions Universities including Deemed to be University imparting technical
education:-
1.
The
punishment to be meted out to the persons indulged in ragging has to be
exemplary and justifiably harsh to act as a deterrent against recurrence of
such incidents. The students who are
found to be indulged in ragging should be debarred from taking admission in any
technical institution in
2.
Every
single incident of ragging a First Information Report (FIR) must be filed
without exception by the institutional authorities with the local police
authorities.
3.
Depending
upon the nature and gravity of the offence as established by the Anti-Ragging
Committee of the institution, the possible punishments for those found guilty
of ragging at the institution level shall be any one or any combination of the
following:-
(i) Cancellation of admission
(ii) Suspension
from attending classes
(iii) Withholding/withdrawing
scholarship/fellowship and other benefits
(iv) Debarring from appearing in any
test/examination or other evaluation process
(v) Withholding
results
(vi) Debarring from representing the institution
in any regional, national or international meet, tournament, youth festival,
etc.
(vii) Suspension/expulsion from the hostel
(viii) Rustication from the institution for
period ranging from 1 to 4 semesters
(ix) Expulsion from the institution and
consequent debarring from admission to any other institution.
(x) fine of Rupees
25,000/-
(xi) Collective punishment: when the persons
committing or abetting the crime of ragging are not identified, the institution
shall resort to collective punishment as a deterrent to ensure community
pressure on the potential raggers.
4. The institutional authority shall intimate
the incidents of ragging occurred in their premises along with actions taken to
the Council and immediately after occurrence of such incident and inform the
status of the case from time to time.
UGC REGULATIONS ON CURBING THE MENACE OF RAGGING
IN HIGHER EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS, 2009.