Death of 3 Civil Services aspirants: SC hearing today

New Delhi : The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear on Monday a matter related to the death of three Civil Services aspirants at a coaching centre here in July due to the flooding in the building’s basement.

On July 27, three civil services aspirants drowned in the basement library of Rau’s IAS Study Circle in the Old Rajinder Nagar area here after it was flooded following heavy rain. As per the cause list of October 21 uploaded on the apex court’s website, a bench of Justices Surya Kant and Ujjal Bhuyan is slated to hear the matter. On September 20, the top court directed a Union government-appointed committee probing the case to submit an interim report about the measures it wanted to be taken to prevent recurrence of such incidents.

The apex court had also asked the Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Delhi governments to apprise it of the policy and legislative and administrative changes made to prevent a repeat of such incidents. It had said uniform initiatives should be taken in the entire National Capital Region (NCR) to prevent another Old Rajinder Nagar-type incident from happening.

Attorney General R Venkataramani had submitted that the Centre has constituted a high-level committee to look into the incident. The top court had said the panel can consider intervention at legislative, policy, and administrative levels, and can elicit the views of all stakeholders before making its recommendations.

The apex court had also said it would be covering the “wider canvas” and would examine the issue at pan-India level to ensure that such incidents were not repeated elsewhere. On August 5, the top court had observed that coaching centres have become “death chambers” and were playing with the lives of students. It had taken cognisance of the matter while hearing a petition filed by an association of coaching centres challenging a December 2023 Delhi High Court order which directed the city’s fire services and the civic body to inspect all coaching centres here to ascertain if they were complying with fire safety norms.