61 deaths by suicide at IITs, IIMs, NITs since 2018: Govt

The data, issued by Minister of State for Education, Subhas Sarkar, came in response to a question by Congress MPs Pradyot Bordoloi, Gaurav Gogoi, Benny Behanan, K Muraleedharan, Rajmohan Unnithan, T N Prathapan and Dean Kuriakose.

“The reasons identified behind such suicides include academic stress, family reasons, personal reasons, mental health issues, etc,” the Ministry response said.

The Ministry’s response comes amid a raging debate on the state of mental health and alleged caste-based discrimination at the country’s premier institutes triggered by the alleged death by suicide of Darshan Solanki, a first-year chemical engineering student at IIT Bombay.

While IIT Bombay ruled out caste-based discrimination as a possible reason behind Solanki’s death, his family have maintained that it may have driven the student to take his own life.

Two students have also died by suicide at the IIT Madras campus since February.

In December 2021, the government informed the Lok Sabha that 122 students enrolled with higher educational institutes under the Union government died by suicide between 2014 and 2021.

Of these, the government said, while 24 belonged to the SC community, three were STs and 41 OBCs. It added that the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 has “provisions for counselling systems for handling stress and emotional adjustments in institutions”.