The Dos

• Anti-ragging committee must meet at least once a month • Hostel superintendent must interact with students to sort out problems and grievances • Hostel watchman must be on alert through the night • First-year students have to be segregated from seniors • Colleges to report to government on functioning of anti-ragging panel

Calcutta, Oct. 30: For the second time in a year the government has asked colleges to crack down on ragging.

The higher education department has started issuing notices to all colleges across Bengal with a five-point directive (see box).

“We had earlier asked all college authorities to strictly enforce the anti-ragging law and take steps to prevent the menace. But incidents of ragging are still being reported. So, we are sending a fresh set of notices to the institutions asking them to be more vigilant,” said Jawhar Sircar, the higher education secretary.

According to official records, six freshers have been victims of ragging this academic season. Many more cases are likely to have gone unreported.

The government woke up after Diptangshu Ganguly of the Institute of Post-Graduate Medical Education and Research (at SSKM Hospital) was abused by four second-year students earlier this month.

Over the past year, the Jalpaiguri Engineering College, Siliguri Institute of Technology, BC Roy Engineering College and National Institute of Technology in Durgapur and the Hooghly Institute of Technology have also featured in horror stories. None of the over 40 accused students has been punished. All of them were suspended and then acquitted.

An official said the chief minister took strong exception to the incidents. At a recent cabinet meeting, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee told higher education minister Satyasadhan Chakraborty: “Ragging in any form is a shame for our government. We must stop it.”

The minister today said: “We have told the colleges that we will not spare anybody.”

Although an anti-ragging committee exists in all education institutions ? it is mandatory to have one following a Supreme Court directive ? most of them are not active. An official also pointed out that all the ragging incidents reported took place at night, “which indicates that there is no proper vigil and the hostel superintendents are not serious about tackling the problem”.