BHUBANESWAR: Less than five per cent of the 18 public universities and 1,058 degree colleges in Odisha have complied with the University Grants Commission (UGC) guidelines on reporting cases of sexual harassment on campuses.
The UGC mandates submission of annual return on cases of sexual harassment by all colleges and universities to both UGC and Higher Education department of the state government.
The data is important to gauge the effectiveness of the anti-sexual harassment measures being taken by the institutions. Termed as the ‘Gender Sensitisation’ data, it seeks information on functionality of internal complaints committees (ICC) apart from number of complaints filed and addressed, and awareness drives conducted on campuses.
As per the last available data of the UGC for the 2022-23 academic session, only four universities and two colleges shared the data with the commission. Among the four universities, the only public university to do so was Utkal University. None of the institutions reported any case of sexual harassment on campuses. Similarly, only two colleges filed the data that year.
From 2015-16 to 2021-22, only 10 annual returns on cases of sexual harassment were received by UGC from universities of the state. Only one college filed this data. An analysis of these annual returns since 2015-16 to 2022-23 reveals that only Ravenshaw University saw registration of nine cases of sexual harassment and two cases by Central University of Odisha in the year 2016-17. All the 11 cases resulted in punishment being served to the accused.
The rest of the institutions have either not received a single complaint of sexual harassment, registered such complaint or informed the UGC about it, sources said.
“There have been many such cases in some public universities, which were also reported in the media. However, these cases do not reach the UGC because the annual return is not filed. Surprisingly, the Higher Education department does not even ascertain that the institutions send data on sexual harassment cases to UGC or even check if the ICCs are operational or not,” said a former vice-chancellor of a state university.
Meanwhile, in wake of the recent Utkal University sexual harassment case which saw suspension of a faculty member, the Higher Education department on Monday directed all the educational institutions under it to ensure their ICCs are functional as per UGC rules. It also asked institutions not having ICC to form them at the earliest as per the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace Act, 2013.