The court expressed its anger upon the authorities for not intervening to prevent coaching centers and accused them of playing with children’s lives.
New Delhi:
Asking for the central and Delhi governments’ response over the deaths of three Civil Service aspirants last month, the Supreme Court has described the coaching centers as ‘death chambers’ today.
Seven students were found dead as they were drowned in a flooded basement of a coaching center located in New Rajendra Nagar, Delhi, which was running in a building in a violation of rules and regulations framed by the civic and fire safety bodies.
Testifying during the hearing in which the apex court had filed a suo moto PIL following the tragedy, the court cited that the coaching centers come with the element of playing with the lives of children.
The court also wanted to know what rules, if any, had been set out for coaching centers, of which there could be hundreds, if not more, in the city of Delhi alone, many operating in unsafe conditions despite charging hefty fees to prepare the students for the IAS entrance and other related examinations.
“These places have turned into death chambers,” Justice Surya Kant and Justice Ujjal Bhuyan said while affirming that coaching institutes can function from homes if there is no strict adherence to safety and basic standards for a human life.
Such norms have to be established as adequate ventilation and safety of the entrance and the exit, the above court stated.
The Supreme Court also slapped a penalty of Rs. 1 lakh on a petition by the Coaching Institute Federation seeking to appeal an order of the Delhi High Court to shut down all coaching business establishments that have not passed the civic and fire safety tests; thirty-two such centers were shut down.
This condition led to the students’ deaths—the drains did not pump the accumulated water from the rain that flooded the basement with sewage that washed back in—and has sparked a debate on the infrastructure of the city.
