The Supreme Court called for a \”robust mechanism to tackle\” caste-based discrimination in higher educational institutions like IIMs and IITs. The court also lamented the \”extremely unfortunate\” incidents – 18 in the past 14 months – of suicide in these universities. A bench of Justice Surya Kant and N Kotiswar Singh observed the UGC, or the University Grants Commission, \”must be given teeth\” to prescribe punitive punishment in such cases. The original petition was filed back in 2019 and sought the court’s aid in enforcing fundamental rights against discrimination on caste grounds, and also to equality and life. The mothers of Rohit Vemula (a PhD scholar at a Hyderabad university who died by suicide in 2016) and Payal Tadvi (a medical student at Mumbai’s TN Topiwala National Medical College, who died, also by suicide, in 2019) appeared before the court for the petitioners. Both Mr Vemulas and Ms Tadvi faced caste- based discrimination.
