A high court division bench ordered the Jadavpur University authorities on Tuesday to ensure students leave campus and hostels within 24 hours of their final exam.
The bench headed by Chief Justice T.S. Sivagnanam directed the JU administration to issue a notification in this regard.
The formal order had not been uploaded on the court website till late Tuesday.
The court was hearing a PIL on the death of a first-year JU student, allegedly ragged and thrown from a second-floor balcony of JU Main Hostel on the night of August 9. The 17-year-old died in hospital in the early hours of August 10.
Among those arrested are several former students who had continued to stay in the hostels even after completing their courses.
Police have arrested 12 students and former students of JU in connection with the death.
Many JU insiders have linked rampant ragging to unrestricted access former students have to the campus and hostels.
While there are hostels inside the university compound, the main hostel is located around 400m away, near Jadavpur police station.
On Tuesday, the petitioner’s lawyer, Trinamul MP Kalyan Bandyopadhyay, alleged that former students of JU were still roaming the campus and “instigating anti-social activities”.
Hearing Bandyopadhyay, the bench issued the directive to the university authorities.
Asked for a reaction to the court order, JU’s officiating vice-chancellor, Buddhadeb Sau, said he had yet to receive a copy of it.
“We will decide on the next course of action after going through the text of the order in detail,” he told The Telegraph on Tuesday evening.
Campus poll prod
On Tuesday, the bench also directed the state government to take steps to conduct campus elections in colleges and universities at regular intervals. The issue of student polls came up during the hearing into the PIL on JU.
A lawyer pointed out that the report of the R.K. Raghavan Committee — set up in 2009 by the Union human resource development ministry, on orders from the Supreme Court, to suggest ways to prevent ragging — had recommended conducting student polls at regular intervals, preferably once a year.
The bench directed the state government to take measures to conduct student union polls in the institutions under its control “as early as possible”.
