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Supreme Court issued 15 binding interim guidelines to prevent student suicides and improve mental health support in educational institutions.
Institutions must adopt uniform mental health policies drawing from UMMEED, MANODARPAN, and the National Suicide Prevention Strategy.
Institutions with 100+ students must appoint qualified counsellors; all staff to receive biannual mental health training.
Special attention required for students from SC, ST, OBC, EWS, LGBTQ+, disabled, and traumatised backgrounds.
Failure to address mental health risks may amount to institutional culpability, with legal consequences.
High-risk cities like Kota and Hyderabad must implement stricter mental health safeguards; states must regulate coaching centres within 2 months.
Demarcation of Ramganga River’s floodplain zone, including Moradabad stretch, to be completed in stages by February 2026.
Underground sewerage system in Rasipuram, Tamil Nadu, completed; sewage now treated and reused for irrigation.
On July 25, 2025, the Supreme Court (SC) issued 15 guidelines aimed at safeguarding students’ mental health. A bench comprising Justice Vikram Nath and Justice Sandeep Mehta, addressing the issue of student suicides in India, stated that these guidelines shall remain in force and be binding until appropriate legislation or regulatory frameworks are enacted by the competent authorities.
All educational institutions have been directed to adopt and implement a uniform mental health policy, drawing from the Understand, Motivate, Manage, Empathize, Empower, Develop (UMMEED) draft guidelines, the Manodarpan initiative and the National Suicide Prevention Strategy. The policy should be reviewed and updated annually and made publicly accessible via institutional websites and notice boards.
Institutions with 100 or more enrolled students must appoint or engage at least one qualified counsellor, psychologist or social worker with demonstrable training in child and adolescent mental health. Institutions with fewer students should establish formal referral arrangements with external mental health professionals.
The guidelines also addressed the issue of batch segregation based on academic performance. All educational institutions — particularly coaching centres — have been instructed to refrain, as far as possible, from engaging in such segregation, public shaming, or the imposition of academic targets disproportionate to students’ capacities.
Additionally, all teaching and non-teaching staff must undergo mandatory training at least twice a year, conducted by certified mental health professionals. This training should cover psychological first aid, identification of warning signs, responses to self-harm and referral mechanisms.
Institutions must also ensure that teaching, non-teaching and administrative staff are sensitively and adequately trained to support students from vulnerable and marginalised backgrounds in an inclusive and non-discriminatory manner.
“This shall include, but not be limited to, students belonging to Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, Other Backward Classes, Economically Weaker Sections, LGBTQ+ communities, students with disabilities, those in out-of-home care, and students affected by bereavement, trauma, or prior suicide attempts, or intersecting form of marginalisation,” one of the guidelines said.
The SC directed all educational institutions to establish robust, confidential and accessible mechanisms for the reporting, redressal and prevention of incidents involving sexual assault, harassment, ragging and bullying based on caste, class, gender, sexual orientation, disability, religion or ethnicity.
Each institution must constitute an internal committee or designated authority “empowered to take immediate action on complaints and provide psychosocial support to victims.”
The guidelines emphasised that students’ safety, both physical and psychological, must be prioritised. Failure to take timely or adequate action, especially when such neglect contributes to a student’s self-harm or suicide, shall amount to institutional culpability, with the administration liable to regulatory and legal consequences.
All coaching hubs, including but not limited to Jaipur, Kota, Sikar, Chennai, Hyderabad, Delhi, Mumbai and other cities where students migrate in large numbers for competitive exam preparation, have been asked to implement heightened mental health protections and preventive measures. These regions, having witnessed disproportionately high rates of student suicides, require special attention.
The guidelines apply to all educational institutions across India — public and private schools, colleges, universities, training centres, coaching institutes, residential academies and hostels — irrespective of affiliation.
The SC clarified that these guidelines do not supersede but run parallel to the ongoing work of the national task force on mental health concerns of students and are issued to provide interim protective measures.
All states and Union Territories were directed to notify rules within two months mandating registration, student protection norms and grievance redress mechanisms for all private coaching centres. These rules must ensure compliance with the mental health safeguards.
The Union of India has been directed to file a compliance affidavit before the SC within 90 days. This affidavit should detail steps taken to implement the guidelines, coordination mechanisms with state governments, the status of regulatory rulemaking for coaching centres and the monitoring systems established. It should also provide the expected timeline for completion of the report and recommendations of the national task force.
Demarcation of the floodplain zone (FPZ) of the Ramganga river’s Moradabad urban stretch in Uttar Pradesh will be completed within six months, the National Green Tribunal (NGT) was told July 23, 2025.
The irrigation department, flood control division for Moradabad, in a report, stated that the demarcation of the entire 526 km length of the river will be done within ten months, following receipt of a report from the National Institute of Hydrology (NIH), Roorkee (Haridwar).
After obtaining all requisite baseline data for FPZ demarcation, from the Director, Survey of India, Lucknow; ISO, Irrigation & Water Resources Department, Uttar Pradesh; the Central Water Commission; and other relevant institutions, the data was transmitted to NIH.
On June 18, 2025, NIH stated that the draft FPZ demarcation report would be submitted by July. However, on July 15, 2025, NIH informed that due to unavoidable delays, the draft report would now be submitted by August 8, 2025.
Upon receipt of the draft report, the irrigation department will begin ground truth verification and proceed with the following stages for the approximately 15 km Moradabad urban stretch:
Ground-truth verification: August 9-September 7
Final NIH report post-verification (1 month): September 8-October 7
Statutory notification under applicable FPZ Rules (1 month): October 8-November 6
Project estimates, technical and financial sanction, tendering and physical demarcation: November 7- February 4, 2026
The total estimated time for this stretch is six months from the date of receiving the NIH draft report.
The report also provided a similar schedule for the entire 526 km length of the Ramganga river, covering all stages — verification, finalisation, notification, project preparation, sanction, tendering and implementation.
The underground sewerage system for Rasipuram town has been completed, the NGT was told July 25, 2025. A report was filed by the district collector for Namakkal, Tamil Nadu.
The system is now fully operational as per its planned capacity, the report said. Out of a total of 7,024 house service connections, 6,716 have already been provided and the remaining 308 are expected to be completed by August 2025. The discharge of sewage through the open rainwater channel has been halted.
A sewage treatment plant, employing the bacterial treatment method, has been constructed by MW Water Solutions and has been operational since April 8, 2025. Post-commissioning, water quality tests of the treated effluent entering the Thattankuttai lake showed that all parameters are within prescribed limits for irrigation use.
The report added that a detailed project report (DPR) for the disposal of treated water is under consideration.