Hyderabad, May 01: In the wake of the Supreme Court direction, the state government has decided to constitute a statelevel anti-ragging monitoring cell.
The governor will be the chairman and AP State Council for Higher Education chairman the convener of the cell. Its members are the principal secretary (higher education), director-general of police or his nominee, vice-chancellor of the university concerned, commissioner of collegiate education, commissioner of technical education, principal secretary (medical education), principal secretary (agriculture), principal secretary (animal husbandry), principal secretary (horticulture) and law department secretary will be the members.
The government said In the GO that the Supreme Court had held that it became necessary that the recommendations made by the Raghavan Committee be implemented immediately in view of the recent incidents of ragging.
According to the order, the cell should be a state-level monitoring one under the chairmanship of the governor who happens to be the chancellor of the universities. The governor may also coordinate with those of the central government institutions located in the state.
The idea behind keeping the governor as chairman is that he could leverage the influence of his office to ensure that the state government as well as the university authorities are suitably instructed to be alert in regard to ragging.
The involvement of governors will also ensure that the autonomy of institutions of higher learning is not compromised. In addition, governors are associated with central universities in their role as chief rector/ chancellor and can oversee the function of coordination where President’s role is required.
The state-level monitoring cell should receive periodically, and at such frequencies that it may lay down, status reports from the university-level monitoring cells and district-level anti- ragging committees.
The monitoring cell shall review and monitor the cases relating to all aspects of ragging from time to time and also adopt time-bound methodologies, take up periodical reviews and monitoring meetings and furnish action taken reports (ATRs) to the chairman of the cell from time to time.
—Agencies