UGC did not defend its equity guidelines in court. But activists explain why they must be defended

On January 29, the Supreme Court stayed the University Grants Commission (Promotion of Equity in Higher Education Institutions) Regulations, 2026, which had been notified around two weeks earlier.

The regulations were aimed at ensuring that educational institutions across the country had inclusive environments, free of discrimination. But their notification by the UGC had been met with protests, largely centred in Delhi and Uttar Pradesh.

Four petitions were also filed in the Supreme Court, challenging the regulations, and asking that the court strike them down or revise them.

The chief objection that the petitions raised was that some of the regulations were specifically aimed at protecting students who belonged to Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes from discrimination, and did not mention students from other groups, such as upper castes and others in the general category.

The petitioners argued that this was, in fact, discriminatory towards those other groups of students.

In the January 29 hearing, the UGC did not put forth any defence of the regulations. In its order staying them, the Supreme Court described them as “prima facie vague and capable of misuse”. If implemented, the court said, they would “divide the country”.

The court issued notice to the Centre and the UGC in the matter, and reinstated earlier regulations that the UGC had issued in 2012. It scheduled the next hearing for March 13.

Activists and lawyers criticised the court's decision, and argued that the protests and petitions were unfounded.

N Sukumar, a professor at Delhi University who has written extensively about caste discrimination on campuses, described one of the protesting general category students' key demands, that they be included within the ambit of the current regulations on caste discrimination, as “meaningless”.

“It doesn't make any sense, what they are asking,” he said. He noted that apart from Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes, the regulations also had provisions pertaining to women, disabled people and members of economically weaker sections. “So, technically, whoever is at a disadvantage from these communities have other regulations that have provisions for them,” he said.

Student leaders also spoke up against the court's decision. “The court is saying that these regulations will divide the country,” Kiran Gowd, the president of the All India OBC Students Association said. “This country is already divided, and these regulations would have unified the divided sections on campuses.”

He added, “I hope the court will also listen to the grievances of students from SC, ST and OBC communities. We have enough data to show that suicides occur among these communities, and that there is severe discrimination on our campuses.”

The UGC first issued regulations aimed at promoting equity on university campuses in 2012.

Among the measures those regulations mandated were that institutions establish equal opportunity cells on their campuses. They also forbade teachers from discriminating against students through means such as grading them unfairly, or allocating hostels on the basis of caste.

But the suicides of Rohith Vemula in 2016 and Payal Tadvi in 2019 led many students and activists to ask whether the regulations were sufficient, and whether they were being properly implemented.

In the aftermath of Tadvi's death, a group of lawyers and a journalist filed a series of right-to-information requests, and determined that most universities had not implemented most of these measures, such as setting up equal opportunity cells whose responsibilities included overseeing complaints of discrimination.

“We filed RTIs in 2019 after Payal Tadvi's death because in her case, she had complained and the issue had not been addressed,” said Disha Wadekar, one of the lawyers who filed the requests. “We found that nobody is implementing these regulations. At least 99% of colleges did not have an equal opportunity cell.”

In 2019, Radhika Vemula and Abeda Tadvi, Rohith and Payal's mothers, filed a petition in the Supreme Court seeking that the regulations be strengthened, and that the UGC take effective steps to implement them.

The petition moved slowly through the courts. It was filed in August 2019, a few months after Payal Tadvi's death. The Supreme Court held the first hearing in the matter shortly after, and issued notice to the UGC.

But it was only five years after the petition was filed, in December 2024, that the Supreme Court asked the UGC to respond to the petitions.

In February 2025, the UGC released a draft of the updated regulations. Activists and academics criticised it fiercely, noting that the 2012 regulations had been diluted, and that the new guidelines were vague and inadequate.

Among their key criticisms were that the regulations did not include clear definitions of what constituted discrimination, and that they did not contain provisions to protect students from other backward class groups. They also argued that provisions to deter false complaints were unduly harsh, and could effectively discourage students who had legitimate grievances. Further, they argued that the equal opportunity cells that would oversee complaints would not be sufficiently representative, and that universities should face penalties if they failed to comply with the regulations.

It was only in January this year that the UGC notified the updated regulations, which incorporated some of the changes that activists had demanded. For instance, they included OBC students within their ambit, and did away with provisions pertaining to false complaints.

Students on campuses across the country, particularly those from marginalised groups, were alarmed by the intense backlash that the new regulations saw from upper caste communities.

The response began with murmurs of discontent on social media. Some users criticised the regulations for lacking provisions that safeguarded the interests of general category students, while others claimed that they would be misused by students from marginalised communities.

The objections quickly gained in intensity and spread to the political domain – as a mark of solidarity with the protestors, at least 11 Bharatiya Janata Party leaders quit from their official party posts in Uttar Pradesh.

Then, over the last two days, protests erupted onto the streets. Students gathered at the UGC office in New Delhi, shouting slogans such as “UGC roll back” and “Batenge toh katenge”. In Uttar Pradesh, upper caste students carried out marches, tonsured their heads and tied black bands on their hands.

Online too, they spewed their anger at the original petition that led the new regulations, as well as the ruling party for supposedly favouring students from marginalised communities over those from the general category.

This aggressive response has left students from marginalised communities deeply fearful of the future of Indian campuses, particularly given that the regulations, they say, only sought to provide basic protections for them. Such protections were crucial, they added, given that UGC data showed that there had been a 118% rise in complaints of caste-based discrimination since 2019.

The protests seemed “to endorse caste-based discrimination on campuses”, said Kiran Gowd. “I don't know how else to see this, because why would people protest against a set of regulations to merely prevent caste discrimination on campuses?”

Dayanidhi, the president of the Ambedkar Students Association in the University of Hyderabad, which Rohith Vemula was also a part of, echoed this argument. “If the upper caste students are not participating in caste discrimination, why are they scared of the regulations?” he said.

Among the key concerns of the protesting students and petitioners was that the regulations only referred to marginalised communities.

“By design and operation, this definition accords legal recognition of victimhood exclusively to certain reserved categories and categorically excludes persons belonging to general or upper castes from its protective ambit, regardless of the nature, gravity, or context of discrimination suffered by them,” one petition said.

Anti-caste activists described this as a strange argument, given that the regulations were specifically aimed at groups that might be targeted for discrimination.

“The demand is quite ridiculous, and is not consistent with how affirmative planning and inclusive justice works,” Ravikant Kisana, a professor at a private university, said.

Wadekar noted that it would be akin to men seeking “protection in women's protective legislation, able-bodied person saying they are facing discrimination based on disabilities”. She added, “Caste and gender are social disabilities and it's quite absurd to say they are facing discrimination on the basis of caste.”

Further, Kisana noted, “To be included, upper caste students must be able to prove that they are vulnerable, specifically that they suffer caste discrimination from SC,ST students.” But, he said, their “demands are not evidence based and not in the spirit of social justice. It seems like they just don't want to be held accountable for their actions and thus making such demands.”

Further, Sukumar noted that an earlier set of UGC regulations, issued in 2023, contained provisions that allowed all students across the country to seek redressal for a wide range of grievances.

The petitions also objected to the inclusion of OBC communities in the regulations. One argued that doing so “mischaracterises them as castes alone, ignoring the constitutional distinction and restricting protection to a predetermined set of classes while excluding others who may suffer caste-based hostility irrespective of their class status”.

Such a position ignored the ground reality that there were vast numbers of castes within the OBC umbrella, many of which faced discrimination even today, Kisana noted. “People think OBC is just these 50-55 castes, but the problem is that OBC has thousands of communities, and many of these communities have never entered colleges,” Kisana said. “So rolling back the regulations or removing OBCs from the regulations is going to push these communities into an even more precarious position.”

Sukumar argued, “When the OBC communities are being given reservations and are recognised as backward communities, why would they not be included in these regulations?”

Kisana worries that in response to the protests, the UGC will most readily tone down provisions pertaining to these groups. “It is easiest to remove the OBC clause and tone down the policy further,” he said. “With issues regarding reservation or regulations like these, we take one step forward and two steps back.”

The intense opposition to the regulations had its roots in a general dissatisfaction that had been building up for some time among upper-caste communities against the ruling government, he reasoned. He said he had observed an increasing tendency among these groups to raise fears about problems such as “Brahmin-phobia”.

“I think there was already a lot of frustration among people, and now with the regulations it is suddenly exploding,” he said.

The recent debates around conducting a caste census may also have left upper-castes worried that they would lose some privileges or power. “It could also be the caste census issue, or that the opposition party is taking up caste issues more these days,” he said. “I think this anger has been building up for a while, and it is being unleashed on the UGC regulations.”

Sukumar noted that he was surprised at how quickly the court listed the recent petitions, particularly given how many years it took to hear Vemula and Tadvi's petition, and given that the protests were restricted to only a few states. “There were no protests in any other part of the country, yet with such a hurry the court has stayed orders,” Sukumar said. “No states in the south, west or east had any such protests.”

Meanwhile, students say caste discrimination is still common on campuses. On the day of Rohith Vemula's 10th death anniversary, for instance, Dayanidhi said, “People tore his posters.” He added, People will also say, ‘Don't get us a teacher from reserved category, we want one from general category.' All these are things people say so casually.”

Source: Scroll
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