Delhi coaching centre deaths: Supreme Court to hear UPSC aspirants’ death case tomorrow

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court will hear the matter related to the death of three UPSC aspirants at a Delhi coaching centre in July due to flooding in the basement building. Three civil service aspirants drowned in the basement library of Rau’s IAS Study Circle in the Old Rajinder Nagar area on July 27 during the monsoon rainfall.

The matter will be heard by a bench comprising Justices Surya Kant and Ujjal Bhuyan on October 21, as per the cause list uploaded on the Supreme Court online portal.

On September 20, the apex court directed the Centre-appointed high-level committee to submit interim measures in four weeks to prevent such incidents. It had also asked the president and general secretary of the Coaching Federation of India to also suggest measures to prevent recurrence of such incidents.

Moreover, it also said that any task force constituted by the high court will continue with its measures. “The present proceedings, which are initiated on a larger canvas, shall have no bearing on those initiatives taken by the High Court,” it said and asked the Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Delhi governments to apprise it of the policy and legislative and administrative changes made to prevent such incidents.

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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. 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.

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.

The high court had transferred the probe into the death of the three students from Delhi Police to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) "to ensure the public has no doubt over the investigation". The three UPSC aspirants who drowned were Shreya Yadav (25) of Uttar Pradesh, Tanya Soni (25) of Telangana and Nevin Delvin (24) of Kerala.