The Supreme Court on Monday took note of the deaths of three IAS aspirants at a coaching centre in Delhi, and termed the incident an "eye-opener". The court also termed the coaching centres "death chambers" and said these were playing with the lives of the students.
"The coaching centres are playing with the lives of students and have become death chambers," the court observed, as it imposed a fine of Rs one lakh on the petitioner, the Coaching Center Federation after he challenged the Delhi High Court order for shutting down coaching centres that lacked a fire No Objection Certificate (NOC).
The court also issued notices to the central government and the Chief Secretary of Delhi, asking whether safety regulations are being implemented in coaching centres.
The Supreme Court asked the Attorney General to assist the court in this matter.
The court mentioned that if coaching centres do not meet safety norms, those should be moved to an online mode. However, it stated that this is not being done at the moment.
The court was hearing an appeal filed by the Coaching Federation of India challenging the directions of the Delhi High Court on the proliferation of coaching institutes in the Mukherjee Nagar area of Delhi for their failure to comply with fire and safety norms.
The court rejected the appeal and also imposed costs of Rs one lakh on the Coaching Federation of India.
Issuing a notice to the Delhi government and the Centre over the incident, a bench headed by Justice Surya Kant said, "We are not sure as to what effective measure has been taken so far by NCT of Delhi or the Union of India. The recent unfortunate incidents taking away the lives of some of the young ones who joined coaching centres for their career pursuits are eye-openers for one and all."
"We, therefore, deem it appropriate to expand the scope of these proceedings as suo motu to issue notice to Union of India and NCT of Delhi to show cause as to what safety norms have been prescribed so far and, if so, what is the effective mechanism introduced for their compliance," the judge said.
The three civil service aspirants died in the basement of Rau's IAS Study Circle in the Old Rajendra Nagar in central Delhi on July 27 due to flooding after heavy rain.
The three aspirants who died in the incident were identified as Tania Soni (25), Shreya Yadav (25) and Navin Delvin (28).
