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For the last four days, Civil Services aspirants have gathered at Delhi’s Old Rajender Nagar (ORN) area where three students lost their lives due to flooding of a coaching centre’s basement on Saturday, July 27.
The protests, led by aspirants of the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) Civil Services examination, have gained support from several renowned educators as well.
Three aspirants — Shreya Yadav from Uttar Pradesh, Nivin Dalwin from Kerala, and Tanya Soni from Telangana — lost their lives when water flooded the basement of Rau’s IAS Study Circle coaching centre on July 27. The flooding occurred after the gate to the coaching centre broke and water rushed into the basement.
However, this incident points towards a much larger issue prevailing in the national capital’s IAS coaching hub.
Students and UPSC educators participating in the ongoing protests expressed that these three deaths highlight a systemic failure.
Speaking about this, renowned UPSC coach and former Civil Servant Dr Tanu Jain, who is also the founder of Tathastu Institute of Civil Services, told EdexLive, “Before becoming a UPSC coach, I was a student. These things are not new, they have been there for a long time. It is a cumulative failure, you cannot put it on a particular agency or institute. It is a systematic failure.”
“I am deeply saddened that it took the loss of three students' lives for people to finally recognise these critical issues. Now, the government agencies, coaching institutes, students and parents should all come together to create a consensus and structure, whereby, these centres are safe for all,” Jain added.
Protesting aspirants have approached Delhi Lieutenant Governor VK Saxena as well as the Commissioner of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) Ashwani Kumar flagging several safety issues and administrative gaps in the coaching industry.
The students have put forward a list of demands including compensation for the deceased’s families, legal action against the civic authorities and coaching institutes, regulation of fee structures and refund policy in coaching centres, grievance redressal cells in institutes, standardisation of seating limit inside libraries, safety auditing of buildings in ORN area, and more.
The crumbling state of ORN
Protestors highlight that the recent unfortunate incident has brought to the surface the crumbling state of Delhi’s coaching hub —Old Rajender Nagar, which was never supposed to be a commercial space in the first place.
Speaking about this, Amit Kilhor, a UPSC educator at StudyIQ IAS, said “The infrastructure of Old Rajendra Nagar is crumbling and it is inadequate to support the huge number of students. Other than this, students are regularly harassed by landlords and brokers. Rents are sky high and there is no regulation for the same.”
“Old Rajender Nagar was never made to be a coaching hub, it was always a residential area. It is an incidental happening in the last two decades that the coaching industry developed there,” Kilhor said.
Amit Kilhor, who himself had been a UPSC aspirant living in Old Rajender Nagar between 2008 and 2018, said that the state government should allocate a separate area to coaching centres with sufficient facilities and infrastructure, in line with Rajasthan government’s efforts in developing a coaching hub in Jaipur’s Pratap Nagar.
Another Civil Services aspirant Himanshu Poswal, who also runs the social media platform UPSC CSE WHY (@CseWhy) with over 1,25,000 followers on X, shared, “In my interaction with students, I have realised that the issue is about the poor condition of real estate in the area and in fact, the entire coaching hub. The rents that are demanded by the landlords and brokers are not in sync with the amenities that are provided. The protests are genuine. A few people lost their lives just because they wanted to study”
Today, Delhi Education Minister Atishi announced that the Delhi government is planning to bring a law to regulate all coaching institutes in the national capital.
