The Supreme Court on Friday called on the University Grants Commission (UGC) to collate and furnish data from universities with regard to setting up of Equal Opportunity Cells and the total number of complaints received under the UGC (Promotion of Equity in Higher Educational Institutions) Regulations 2012 alongwith action taken reports.The court was dealing with a PIL filed by the mothers of Rohit Vemula and Payal Tadvi assailing caste discrimination in higher educational institutions (HEI), the Live Law reported.According to the report, a bench of Justices Surya Kant and Ujjal Bhuyan passed the order upon hearing Senior Advocate Indira Jaising and Advocate Disha Wadekar who stressed UGC’s failure to implement the 2012 regulations and urged the court to seek data from the Union of India and the National Assessment and Accreditation Council -including data as the number of suicides by students belonging to Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe category in HEIs.In a response to a claim that as many as 115 suicides have taken place in IITs alone between 2004-’24, Justice Kant remarked that the court is cognizant of the sensitivity of the matter and would begin hearing it periodically to find out a mechanism that would translate the 2012 Regulations into a reality, Live Law added.
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