Most who end lives from Telangana, Andhra Pradesh

Hyderabad: Over the last 25 years, nearly 66 IIT students have committed suicide and, strikingly, more than 20 of them have been from Andhra Pradesh and Telangana State.

This year has already witnessed 16 suicides while in 2011, there were 10 suicides in different IIT campuses across the country.

The two years in between 2012 and 2013 fortunately had fewer suicides, but the trend of increasing suicide numbers is apparent. This year, nearly six IIT students from AP and TS committed suicides.

A Task Force report of the HRD ministry on suicides in higher education institutions had said that the most common reasons for suicide were relationship issues, personal problems, mental stress, and family problems. Poor grades were also found to fuel suicide cases, said the report.

The Task Force also exhorted IITs and other institutions to set up counselling centres for the benefit of students. Some of the IITs have already set up the counselling centres.

But this hasn’t arrested the spike in the number of suicides. IIT Kanpur has a full-fledged counselling centre, but also has the infamous tag of having the highest number of suicides.