Ragging rules ready for roll-out

Time of India

2 days ago

T'puram: When new laws are cleared in the assembly, departments usually take months, sometimes years, to frame the fine print rules that make them work. The home department has chosen to invert that script.
Even before the Kerala Prohibition of Ragging (Amendment) Bill, 2025 reaches the floor of the House, a detailed set of Kerala Prohibition of Ragging Rules, 2025 has been prepared, all but guaranteeing that the moment the bill is voted through, the regime will switch on without a pause.
The draft rules run to 11 sections and leave little to guesswork. They start by welding the proposed state law to the country's new criminal code.
"The criminal offences mentioned under Section 2(b)(iii) of the Act are having the same meaning as defined under the Bharatiya Nyaya Samhita 2023," the preamble declares, before roping in the NDPS Act, the IT Act, and Pocso for good measure. Punishments, it promises, will be imposed "by adopting the procedures enshrined in Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 and Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023.
" In other words, ragging probes will move under the same evidentiary and procedural yardsticks as any serious criminal investigation.
Unlike the broader amendment act, which sets out new offences and higher penalties, the rules drill into daily campus life. Every college and school must convene an anti-ragging committee headed by the principal but the rules go further from day one of an academic year, the principal "shall obtain an affidavit from the students and parents to the effect that the student… would not indulge in the act or abet the act of ragging," and must convene a strategy meeting of wardens, parents, police, and district officials to map trouble spots.
Notice board posters warning of penalties are mandatory, and heads of institutions are told to give adequate publicity to the law prohibiting ragging.
The anti ragging squad a body composed only of insiders with no outside representation is instructed "to make surprise raids, checks on hostels, and other places vulnerable to incidents of ragging." If an incident is reported, the squad must hold an on-the-spot inquiry, allow both sides to present evidence based on the principles of natural justice, and hand its findings to the committee that will decide punishments.
In a nod to collective responsibility, the draft warns that when culprits cannot be pinpointed "the institution shall resort to collective punishment." Teachers are not the only adults conscripted. Each campus must run a mentoring cell; the rules specify the curious ratio of one mentor for every six freshers and one senior mentor for every six junior mentors, with faculty expected to keep the pyramid intact.
At the top of the new enforcement pyramid sits a state level monitoring cell, backed by a state nodal officer with authority to receive "distress messages" in real time.
The cell can recommend that govt funds or scholarships be withheld from institutions that drag their feet. Where a college beyond Plus Two level still fails to act, Regulation 9.2 of the UGC anti-ragging code will kick in another signal that state and central frameworks have been stitched together to avoid jurisdictional cracks.
A hostel-level punishment can be challenged before the district educational officer, whose own orders rise to the deputy director of education, and so on up to the director general of education. Higher education institutions must follow the UGC's own appellate route, ensuring parity with national rules.
Crucially, the document stakes a claim to immediate viability. Because the procedural nuts and bolts are already in place, officials say the moment the assembly passes the amendment bill, colleges cannot plead lack of clarity.