Rohith Vemula Case | SabrangIndia

‘Diluted Existing Rules’: Rohith Vemula, Payal Tadvi’s Mothers Slam UGC’s Draft Equity Regulations

sabrang — Fri, 28 Mar 2025 07:31:41 +0000

Mumbai: The recently submitted draft of the University Grants Commission (UGC) (Promotion of Equity in Higher Educational Institutions) Regulations, 2025, is expected to cause “administrative chaos,” according to the mothers of Rohith Vemula and Payal Tadvi, two students who died following alleged institutionalised caste discrimination.

The UGC submitted the new draft to the Supreme Court last month in a six-year-old petition filed by Radhika Vemula and Abeda Tadvi. In the petition, the two mothers, after losing their children, sought accountability and the establishment of adequate mechanisms by the UGC to address caste-based discrimination in university spaces.

The UGC, unprompted by the court or the petitioners, has submitted the Equity Regulations Draft, which undoes some of the crucial clauses from the 2012 regulations. The petitioners had moved the court to highlight the ineffectiveness and lack of government will to put its act together. Instead of addressing these issues, the UGC has further diluted the existing regulations.

‘New regulations will make redressal more difficult’

Vemula and Tadvi argue that the newly submitted draft regulations will make redressal more difficult, as the UGC has decided to group all forms of discrimination – including those based on gender, disabilities, religion and caste – under a single umbrella. In contrast, the 2012 Equity Regulations primarily focused on caste-based discrimination. Existing mechanisms already address other forms of discrimination, and expanding the scope of the Equity Regulations will only lead to more chaos in the dispensation of justice, the petitioners assert.

The petitioners, represented by lawyers Indira Jaisingh and Disha Wadekar, have pointed out the lack of adequate mechanisms to address the growing number of discrimination cases and suicides on campuses. They argue that the UGC’s proposal to dilute the existing regulations on caste discrimination and introduce other forms of discrimination will not only hamper the redressal of caste-based discrimination but also “risk undermining the effectiveness of current regulations related to gender and persons with disabilities (PwDs).”

In addition to filing an affidavit in the Supreme Court in response to the UGC’s draft regulations, the petitioners have submitted detailed suggestions to the UGC, comparing the 2012 regulations with the proposed ones. They have identified gaps and provided effective suggestions to the higher education governing statutory body.

One crucial suggestion is the need for a clear definition of what constitutes caste-based discrimination in higher education. Wadekar notes that the draft regulation fails to specify what constitutes caste-based discrimination. “Discriminatory practices in university spaces often get normalised, and without a clear definition, universities may exercise their discretionary powers and, more often than not, attempt to shirk responsibilities,” Wadekar said. Her observation is based on past data showing how universities have denied the existence of caste-based discrimination on campuses.

In the past decade, as caste-based discrimination and suicides rose, the UGC was compelled to notify the UGC (Promotion of Equity in Higher Educational Institutions) Regulations 2012, also known as the Equity Regulations. These regulations required all colleges and universities to establish an Equal Opportunity Cell to oversee the promotion of equality and appoint an anti-discrimination officer to investigate complaints regarding discrimination in violation of equity. However, the regulations were not fully implemented as intended.

The proposed regulations, besides lacking clear definitions of discrimination, also exclude the Other Backward Classes (OBC) community from their scope, applying only to students from the Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST). In 2012 regulations too, students from OBC communities were excluded. The petitioners argue that this will be unjust to OBC students, who are equally vulnerable to discrimination on campuses. Data shows that many students from the OBC community have resorted to suicide or dropped out of colleges because of caste-based discrimination in the past decade.

The proposed regulations do not include staff or faculty members. Wadekar argues that the suggestion to include staff members comes from numerous anecdotal instances where faculty members have reported discriminatory practices based on their caste identities.

The 2012 regulations lacked a monitoring mechanism to ensure that the equity measures were effectively implemented. Vemula and Tadvi have suggested that the UGC should expressly mandate that “all Universities and Colleges submit periodic reports to UGC on the working of the Equity Regulations.”

While the proposed regulation has several problems, it also contains some concrete measures, such as the registration of FIRs once a case under penal laws is established. To this, the petitioners have suggested that “the heads of institutions should be mandated to register FIRs within 24 hours for complaints where a case is made out under penal laws.”

2012 regulations’ failure

In January 2016, Rohith Vemula, a PhD scholar at the University of Hyderabad (UoH), along with five other Dalit students, was expelled from the university housing facility for an alleged attack on an ABVP member. As the expelled students intensified their protest against the university administration’s decision, a few days into the protest, on January 17, 2016, Rohith died by suicide. UoH Vice-Chancellor Appa Rao Podile, then BJP MLC N. Ramachandra Rao, and two ABVP members (Susheel Kumar and Rama Krishna) were accused of abetting Rohith’s suicide. An FIR was filed against them, but the police failed to take any action.

In Dr. Payal Tadvi’s case, her suicide notes and her mother Abeda Tadvi’s testimony ensured that her three harassers – senior doctors Hema Ahuja, Bhakti Mehare, and Ankita Khandelwal – were immediately arrested. A damning 1,200-page chargesheet was filed against them. They have been accused of torturing Payal for an entire year and hurling casteist slurs at her. The Tadvis belong to the Bhil (of the Tadvi sub-caste) tribal community, and Payal was perhaps the first woman from her community to become a doctor. Advocate Wadekar is representing Abeda Tadvi in the criminal proceedings as well.

If the 2012 regulation had worked effectively, both Rohith Vemula and Payal Tadvi would not have needed to take drastic steps. The existing regulation has made it difficult for students to report instances of discrimination. Most of these cases are known because of individual efforts undertaken by anti-caste activists or organisations, which have, from time to time, highlighted extreme cases of discrimination on Indian university campuses.

Besides Rohith and Payal’s deaths, numerous other suicides have occurred in Indian universities over the past two decades. While some of these deaths were covered by the media, many were documented in an independent study conducted by a Delhi-based organisation called the Insight Foundation, headed by educationist Anoop Kumar.

But instead of focusing on these cases and encouraging students to come forward and report incidents of discrimination, the draft regulations mention “false complaints.” Wadekar says the draft doesn’t differentiate between a false complaint and a mere inability to substantiate a complaint with adequate evidence. “This clause,” Wadekar said, “should be completely removed.” “Students already find it hard to approach the Equity Committee, and such clauses will only act as a deterrent,” she added.

UGC’s hasty actions

This is not the first time that the UGC has acted hastily in response to the petition. In 2024, the UGC had set up a nine-member committee to look into the concerns highlighted in the petition. The Wire, in February last year, had looked into the composition of the committee and highlighted the chequered past of several of its members, including allegations of caste discrimination levelled against them.

Even as the division bench of Justice Surya Kant and N. Kotiswar Singh of the Supreme Court have been hearing this petition, another petition, Amit Kumar and Others versus Union of India, highlighting identical issues, is being heard before Justices J.B. Pardiwala and R. Mahadevan. On March 24, in a significant order, the apex court directed the formation of a National Task Force to address the mental health concerns of students and prevent the rising number of suicides in higher educational institutions (HEIs). This National Task Force is being constituted as a ten-member committee, with retired Supreme Court judge S. Ravindra Bhat as its chairperson. Other members include mental health experts, teaching professionals, among others. This order too refers to the ongoing petition filed by Vemula and Tadvi.

Courtesy: The Wire

The post ‘Diluted Existing Rules’: Rohith Vemula, Payal Tadvi’s Mothers Slam UGC’s Draft Equity Regulations appeared first on SabrangIndia.

How this self-proclaimed pro-Dalit government has all but buried the Rohith Vemula case

Sun, 01 Jan 2017 17:02:50 +0000

How this self-proclaimed pro-Dalit government has all but buried the Rohith Vemula case

Investigation has been stalled as if the abetment of suicide case hinges on his caste.

Both killed themselves in hostel rooms. Each tragedy was followed by the registration of an abetment of suicide case: one in January 2016 and the other in October. The prime accused in the case of PhD scholar Rohith Vemula was the vice chancellor of Hyderabad Central University, P Appa Rao, while in the case of PG medical student Sandhya Rani, it was the gynaecology professor of Guntur Medical College, VAA Lakshmi. The Guntur police arrested Lakshmi within a month, along with five others who had allegedly helped her go underground after Sandhya’s death. By contrast, the Cyberabad police, even 11 months after Rohith Vemula’s death, is yet to arrest Rao – or any of the other five accused persons named in the first information report.

This is despite the fact that the FIR lodged by Rohith Vemula’s comrade, Dontha Prashanth, is a more serious one. For, besides alleging abetment of suicide under Section 306 of the Indian Penal Code, it invokes provisions of the Prevention of Atrocities Act. Applicable to cases where the victims are either Dalits or Adivasis, the special law enhances the maximum penalty for abetment of suicide from 10 years of imprisonment to life sentence. But, ironically, the very invocation of this Act has ended up serving as an excuse for holding up this politically fraught case. At a year-end review meeting with the media last week, Cyberabad police commissioner Sandeep Shandilya claimed that the case could make no progress unless and until it was officially clarified that Rohith Vemula was indeed a Dalit. The need for such a clarification is curious given that Rohith Vemula did very much have a scheduled caste certificate, whose validity had never been questioned in his lifetime.

Orchestrated campaign

If the investigation into his suicide is still subject to a fresh determination of his caste identity, it’s because of a campaign orchestrated by his political adversaries belonging to the extended Sangh Parivar in an obvious bid to shield the accused named in the FIR. Though Rohith Vemula had been driven to suicide in the pursuit of his Ambedkarite politics, the object of the campaign has been to establish, somehow or the other, that Rohith Vemula himself was not Dalit. In the beginning, a range of Hindutva voices including Union minister Sushma Swaraj tried to take advantage of the fact that one of his divorced parents was not Dalit. An error in the application for his brother’s birth certificate was also sought to be exploited thereafter. Such diversionary tactics have been allowed to stall the case, which levels allegations against not only Rao but also Union minister Bandaru Dattatreya, two local Bharatiya Janata Party leaders and two Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad leaders. The charade involves members of the ruling dispensation and the law enforcement machinery, at the Centre as well as the states of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh.

Though he had been brought up in Guntur town single handedly by his Dalit mother, tailor Radhika Vemula, his detractors came up with a counter narrative citing his father, security guard Mani Kumar Vemula, who had long lost contact with his children.

Since the father belonged to an “other backward class” community, it was made out that Rohith Vemula could not but fall in the same category, although the absentee father lived more than a 100 kms away from Guntur town in a village called Gurazala. Much as it fits the Hindu right’s ploy to obfuscate the case, this patriarchal presumption about Rohith Vemula’s caste flies in the face of the settled law.

Settled law

The presumption that the child would belong to the caste of the father in an inter-caste marriage is “by no means”, as the Supreme Court laid down in 2012, “conclusive or irrebuttable”. The judgment added that “it is open to the child of such marriage to lead evidence to show that he was brought up by the mother who belonged to the scheduled caste/scheduled tribe.” It prescribed two criteria for the child in such a situation to be considered a Dalit or Adivasi. One, that “he did not have any advantageous start in life but on the contrary suffered the deprivations, indignities, humilities and handicaps like any other member of the community to which his mother belonged.” Two, “that he was always treated as a member of the community to which his mother belonged not only by that community but by people outside the community as well.”

For someone who suffered a “social boycott” along with four other Dalit students at the hands of the university administration, and for someone who famously said in his suicide note that he had been “reduced to his immediate identity and nearest possibility”, Rohith Vemula did surely fulfill the Supreme Court’s twin criteria for being regarded as a Dalit despite having a non-Dalit father. So, it was no surprise that when the National Commission of Scheduled Castes had asked him to address the doubt raised by Mani Kumar about Rohith Vemula’s caste identity, the collector of Guntur district, Kantilal Dande, affirmed in writing in April that as per the “available revenue records”, the deceased was very much a Dalit. Dwelling on his antecedents, Dande recorded that Rohith Vemula’s mother was a Dalit who had been adopted in her infancy by an OBC family and that after her divorce she had returned to Guntur town to live with her children in a Dalit settlement. In the light of these findings, the National Commission of Scheduled Castes advised the commissioner of Cyberabad police in June “to complete the investigation and file the report at the earliest, in the court of law.”

The police, however, disregarded the call for urgency from the Commission, which was then headed by Congress MP PL Punia. The latest excuse for their continuing inaction, as evident from the October minutes of the Commission, is a U-turn made by Guntur collector.

Reopening the issue of Rohith Vemula’s caste identity, Dande told the Commission that the district-level scrutiny committee had received “certain representations on this subject” and it would take “some more time” to dispose them of. Betraying the lengths to which the government and the Hindutva camp at large have gone to scuttle the case, those representations were apparently prompted by a discrepancy in an application filed in 2014 for the birth certificate of Rohith Vemula’s younger brother, Raja Vemula.

The Union minister of social justice, Thaawar Chand Gehlot, pointed out triumphantly in a press interview, as if it was a clincher, that the application signed by Radhika Vemula had mentioned that Raja Vemula was an OBC. But Gehlot overlooked the crucial fact that Raja, as disclosed in the Guntur collector’s original report in April, had already obtained his Scheduled Caste certificate in 2007 and that his caste identity was anyway irrelevant to the application for his birth certificate. This attempt to make a mountain out of a molehill has not been given up even after Rohith Vemula’s paternal grandfather, Venkateswarlu Vemula, came up with a plausible explanation for the circumstances in which that superfluous, though erroneous, reference to Raja’s caste came to be made in the birth certificate application. Rebutting Gehlot’s statement, Venkateswarlu Vemula wrote to the Guntur collector in June saying that as the birth certificate had to be obtained from Gurazala, where Radhika Vemula had lived before the break-up of her marriage, he had taken her signature on a blank sheet and given it to an official to draft the application on it.

After granting interim relief to some of the accused persons, the Hyderabad high court has not listed their petitions for a hearing in the last eight months. As a result, the complainant in the case has been deprived of a chance to challenge the high-level attempt to get the influential accused off the hook. Meanwhile, a judicial inquiry into Rohith Vemula’s suicide, Justice Roopanwal Commission, went out of its way to deny his Dalit identity. If a petty mistake in a handwritten application for a birth certificate is eventually used to revoke a lawfully issued caste certificate, it will be a travesty of justice. The invocation of Prevention of Atrocities Act provisions has already been turned into an opportunity to divert the investigation from Rohith Vemula’s death to his caste. Rather than his tormentors, he is himself being put in the dock, posthumously.

But then, even if it is ruled that Rohith Vemula belonged to an OBC, the six persons accused of abetting his suicide under the special Dalit law will remain liable to be tried for the same offence under the general criminal law. Consider the prompt action taken against the six accused persons in the abetment of suicide case booked two months ago in Rohith Vemula’s home district for the death of OBC medical student Sandhya Rani. The contrasting trajectories of the two cases could not have been more telling.

The author has authored When a Tree Shook Delhi: The 1984 Carnage and its Aftermath

Courtesy: Scroll.in

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