Radhika Vemula, the mother of University of Hyderabad’s (UoH) deceased research scholar Rohith Vemula, met Telangana Deputy Chief Minister Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka on Saturday, January 17, urging the Telangana government to pass the Rohith Act. Activists and students who were part of the protests succeeding Rohith’s death in 2016 accompanied Radhika Vemula in the meeting.
Radhika submitted a memorandum to DyCM Bhatti and asked for the cases against former Ambedkar Students Association (ASA) students to be withdrawn, carry forward the investigation into ‘the institutional murder of Rohith Vemula’ and enact the Rohith Act.
The act, drafted by civil society members in Bengaluru, is intended to address caste-based discrimination in higher educational institutions.The Congress-led Karnataka government has proposed to enact the Karnataka Rohith Vemula (Prevention of Exclusion or Injustice) (Right to Education and Dignity) Bill, 2025 to criminalise caste discrimination in Indian educational institutions following support for it from senior Congress leader Rahul Gandhi.
A few hours before Radhika Vemula met with DyCM Bhatti, Rahul Gandhi issued a statement calling for the urgent implementation of the Rohith Vemula act in the country. “Caste discrimination in educational institutions must be criminalised by law. Today marks 10 years since Rohith Vemula left us.” he had said.
While Karnataka is expected to pass the Bill in their upcoming Assembly session, Telangana’s Congress government is yet to prepare a draft of the Bill despite Ministers in the state repeatedly stating that they are taking the matter seriously. In July 2025, Deputy CM Bhatti Vikramarka had announced that his government would reopen investigation into the case following Telangana BJP’s appointment of N Ramchander Rao as its state president. Ramchander was named an accused in Rohith’s suicide. The Telangana police under the Congress government had filed a closure report in the case of Rohith’s death in 2024, absolving all the accused including Ramchander Rao.
Coinciding with Rohith’s death anniversary on January 17, the Ambedkar Students Association (ASA) organised a program unveiling and launching the ‘People’s Draft of the Rohith Act’ at the north shopping complex at University of Hyderabad. The complex, housing Velivada – a space honouring and commemorating Rohith Vemula – witnessed a sea of protestors, students and activists gathering around Rohith’s bust.
After garlanding her son’s bust, Radhika Vemula and several others including V Raghunath (the lawyer representing ASA students in the Rohith Vemula case), Gujarat MLA Jignesh Mevani, academicians Bhangya Bhukya and V Geetha and others addressed the students at UoH’s Savitri Bai Phule auditorium. The group was also joined by Abeda Tadvi and Rameshbhai Solanki, the parents of late Payal Tadvi and Darsheel Solanki who died following caste-based discrimination in academia.
Referring to Abeda’s struggles while dealing with cancer, Radhika Vemula said, “Just like cancer, casteism is a disease. But casteism is worse. It's like the coronavirus. It endangers people at large. But there was a vaccine to cure Covid, and similarly, the Rohith Act is a cure for casteism,” Radhika remarked amid thunderous applause.
Feminist scholar V Geetha read out segments of Rohith Vemula’s letter in her speech. She also brought up the repeated onslaught on Radhika by senior BJP leaders like Smriti Irani who had questioned whether Rohith was a Dalit or not, owing to the fact that his father wasn’t from a Scheduled Caste. “The very nature of such questions is cruel,” Geetha said. “It denies a child’s relationship to his mother and is yet another reminder of how Dalits’ selfhood is often confiscated,” she added.
V Raghunath, the lawyer representing the five ASA scholars who were suspended alongside Rohith Vemula in 2016, spoke about how despite the existence of the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, there was a need to push for the Rohith Act. “90% of SC/ST atrocities cases stop at the level of chargesheet. You never hear of any police station registering a suo-moto FIR against someone under this law. To everyone who believes in equality and human society, we need to urge the Telangana government to implement the Rohith Act,” he said.
Dontha Prashant, a former ASA member from UoH who was suspended alongside Rohith Vemula in 2016, currently works as an Assistant Professor in the Economics Department at Azim Premji University. “What was born out of the Rohith movement was several instances of Dalits asserting themselves in spaces that were previously closed off to them. Be it organising a reading circle in Bengaluru’s Cubbon Park or any other movement. Rohith was an extremely self reflexive person and that self reflexivity has pushed others to participate in collective spaces and build communion – which has worked as an antidote to casteism,” he said.