Anti-ragging code tougher than IPC

Judiciarybaiters are silent even though the SC has virtually legislated by drafting and enforcing a tough anti-ragging code in educational institutions to save freshers from a minuscule number of pervert seniors, who get a kick by torturing the new entrants.


Turf-conscious parliamentarians and legislators often take up constitutional arms to take potshots at the SC whenever it pronounces an order that even mistakenly steps into their legislative domain. “Judges should stay within the judicial boundary and not encroach upon the legislative domain”. “Judiciary should not usurp legislative or executive functions while entertaining PILs”. These are some of the common comments from politicians. What they meant to clarify was that apex court’s job was to interpret law and test its constitutional validity, but certainly not to enact law in the garb of passing orders on issues pertaining to governance.

There was no such noise from politicians, even though Parliament was in session when the SC virtually enacted a code of conduct for students in a bid to erase the menace of ragging.


The horrifying consequences of physical and mental torture that has got blurred with ragging, especially in professional colleges, is known to all — be they politicians, police, government officials, academicians or judges.


Year after year, at the start of the academic session, the media reports incidents of suicides by freshers who could bear no more of the senseless and humiliating ragging inflicted on them by their seniors.


Call it a law and order matter or academic indiscipline of the highest order, the magnitude of the problem is such that it cannot escape attention. Neither the politicians, academicians and police nor the government devised a way or the legislators enacted a law to effectively deal with the menace.


They watched the heart-rending drama every year, in which promising careers got nipped in the bud. Each incident evoked anger among parents, who after a knee-jerk reaction, moved on with their lives. Left to shed tears silently were those who lost their sons and daughters. Though late, it was the SC which again stepped in. It had recently made college elections a tame affair by clamping a ban on money and muscle power as also the interference of political parties, where it had acted on the Lungdoh Committee recommendations.


To deal with ragging, the court appointed a committee headed by former CBI director R K Raghavan, which did an in-depth study of the problem and came out with workable solutions to make campus life more sociable.


There was no protest from the judiciary baiters on this occasion, and there was no din over the visible over-stepping, for the apex court virtually legislated an antiragging code that appeared tougher than the Indian Penal Code (IPC).


(TOI:21/05/2007)