Virtually a decade after Dalit doctoral scholar Rohith Vemula dedicated suicide on the College of Hyderabad (UoH), the Siddaramaiah-led Congress authorities in Karnataka has provide you with a invoice in his title to curb caste-based discrimination and harassment in private and non-private universities within the state.
The Siddaramaiah authorities is more likely to introduce the invoice within the state meeting throughout the winter session, which shall be held from December 8 to 19. The invoice was introduced ahead after lobbying by high Congress chief Rahul Gandhi.
The invoice, known as the Karnataka Rohith Vemula (Prevention of Exclusion or Injustice) (Proper to Training and Dignity) Invoice, 2025, goals to handle the “actuality of caste” in increased schooling establishments (HEIs). Some lecturers and authorized specialists who reviewed the invoice mentioned it will curb “caste-based discrimination, harassment and atrocities”.
The proposed invoice goals to handle “direct, oblique and systemic discrimination and harassment” based mostly on caste and offers for “civil cures for survivors in instances of discrimination and penalties for perpetrators of harassment”.
In accordance with the draft invoice, civil cures embrace submitting a grievance with an fairness committee inside an academic establishment (equal to an inner complaints committee in instances of sexual harassment). The matter may then go to the District Court docket and the Excessive Court docket.
Victims may be college students, school, or non-faculty at increased schooling establishments. The invoice offers with a variety of discrimination in “acts, actions, omissions, therapy, insurance policies, customs, requirements or practices.”
The invoice states that discrimination may be “oblique and systemic.” Oblique discrimination contains conduct that “seems to be impartial or caste-independent however adversely impacts a person or group of people belonging to a Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe.”
The Act defines “systemic discrimination” as any act that’s “a statutory mandate or a part of the construction of an establishment, together with the institution and functioning of governing our bodies similar to government councils, tutorial councils, analysis evaluation boards, and many others., that creates or perpetuates an adversarial impression on people belonging to Scheduled Castes or Scheduled Tribes.”
The Invoice additionally distinguishes between cruelty and discrimination and defines cruelty as “acts laid out in part (3) of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, as amended occasionally.”
Increased schooling establishments are outlined as “digital and offline areas for educating, analysis, administration and communication, together with locations of labor and residence in academic establishments, hostels, well being centres, sports activities grounds, employees quarters, public locations (together with parks, roads and alleys), cafeterias and transportation amenities, the place college students, school and/or employees socialize and work together on college campuses or different areas”.
The invoice imposes completely different penalties on people and organizations for numerous offenses below its provisions.
The invoice offers a minimal penalty for people to subject a written apology for discrimination and offers harsher penalties for brutality. For instance, the primary offense below its atrocity provisions carries a penalty of 1 12 months’s imprisonment and a superb of Rs 10,000, and the court docket is empowered to award compensation payable by the defendant to the sufferer, which may lengthen to Rs 100,000. Repeated atrocities below the Act are punishable with three years’ imprisonment along with a superb of Rs 100,000.
If an academic establishment violates the availability of being “open to all lessons, castes, creeds, genders and nations”, a minimal superb of Rs 100,000 and a most of Rs 1 million shall be imposed. Additional, the state authorities “shall not present any monetary help or subsidy to such establishments” in violation of the provisions of the invoice.
The invoice additionally says that SC/ST individuals have the proper to “overcome caste-based prejudice” by “taking all authorized steps to handle caste prejudice…refusing to take part in occasions or actions that reinforce caste prejudice.” They’ll resist boycotts, adverse efficiency critiques or penalties for voicing anti-caste views, along with “approaching applicable authorities for revising curricula that reinforce caste prejudices” and “exercising informational autonomy relating to their identification as SC/STs”, the invoice says.
“The invoice offers for punishment of harassment, discrimination and brutality occurring wherever in increased schooling establishments. It will be certain that directors can’t escape duty for discrimination even in hostels and playgrounds,” mentioned a tutorial.
The Vemula Invoice was a part of the Congress manifesto for the Might 2023 Karnataka Meeting elections.
In April this 12 months, Rahul Gandhi had written an identical letters to Mr. Siddaramaiah and the CMs of two different Congress-ruled states, Telangana CM A. Revanth Reddy and Himachal Pradesh CM Sukhvinder Singh Suku, urging them to deliver a invoice named after Vemula to forestall caste-based bias in academic establishments.
Vemula ended his life in a hostel room on the college campus on January 17, 2016, weeks after he was expelled from the hostel because of a dispute between his Ambedkar College students’ Affiliation (ASA) and the RSS-affiliated Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP). In her suicide be aware, Vemula protested towards caste discrimination, saying, “My beginning was a deadly accident.”
His demise sparked widespread protests throughout the nation over alleged discrimination and harassment towards Dalits and different oppressed communities in academic establishments.
