Rohith Vemula not a Dalit:Commission

Union HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar on Wednesday said that his Ministry had received in a "sealed" cover the Roopanwal commission report on the death of University of Hyderabad (UoH) scholar Rohith Vemula. He said the Ministry would implement its recommendations after studying them. 

Roopanwal Commission report is in contradiction to the report submitted by the Guntur district Collect Kantilal Dande to the National Commission for Scheduled Castes.

Asked about reports that the report had held that Vemula was not a 'dalit,' Javadekar said he could not comment as he had not read the report yet. The HRD Minister said the report was with the UGC and had come on Wednesday in a sealed cover. "The sealed report has been received and we will open it today to see what the recommendations are.

The main issue was that such incidents should not happen in the education world. No student should commit suicide and how such incidents should be prevented needs to be learnt. We will also share an action plan in this regard," Javadekar said. Asked why the report was not directly



submitted to the Ministry, Javadekar said it could be because the officer concerned, who was serving the Commission, was with the UGC. The HRD Minister, when asked about whether he had met Justice Roopanwal, said he had not.

The one-man judicial commission was set up by the Ministry of Human Resource Development to probe the circumstances leading to Rohith Vemula’s suicide at the UoH in January this year. Former Allahabad High Court judge A K Roopanwal, who was appointed by the then HRD Minister Smriti Irani, submitted his report to the University Grants Commission (UGC) in the first week of August.

The report’s observation that Vemula was not a Dalit is significant against the backdrop of the controversy fuelled by Union Ministers Sushma Swaraj and Thaawarchand Gehlot, who had questioned the student’s caste identity.

Incidentally, Justice Roopanwal’s observation is at odds with the report submitted by Guntur District Collector Kantilal Dande to the National Commission for Scheduled Castes (NCSC). The NCSC report, according to sources, is final.