UGC’s anti-discrimination rules: What has changed, what has improved and what still concerns experts

UGC’s anti-discrimination rules: What has changed, what has improved and what still concerns experts Premium

The University Grants Commission's (Promotion of Equity in Higher Education Institutions) Regulations, 2026, represent another attempt at grappling with the issue of caste-based discrimination. These regulations are a result of several years of student activism, litigation, and public inquiry in the wake of concerning number of student suicides. The regulations are framed under a broader effort to put “full equity and inclusion” at the forefront of decision-making as part of the National Education Policy 2020.

However, despite UGC's claims that the new rules are stronger and more inclusive, experts disagree. Some believe that the framework may not truly deal with caste discrimination at its core, and just covers the issue under a broader idea of equity.

The complaints of caste-based discrimination in higher education increased from 2019 to 2024–25, as noted in the Third Report (2024–25) of the Standing Committee on the Welfare of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Eighteenth Lok Sabha).

According to former UGC Chairperson, Sukhadeo Thorat, the establishment of Equal Opportunity Cells (EOCs) was a clear response to persistent evidence of caste-based discrimination in Indian higher education and the institutional failure to address it. The Equal Opportunity Cell, introduced in 2012, was the first formal mechanism specifically created to address discrimination within educational institutions.

The 2012 regulations had come after a series of high-profile incidents, including the suicide of a Scheduled Caste student at AIIMS, which prompted the Ministry of Health to appoint a committee chaired by Prof. Thorat. The committee documented systemic discrimination within medical institutions. Despite partial acceptance of the report, similar incidents continued, including suicides at Jawaharlal Nehru University and elsewhere.

The national protest for research scholar Rohith Vemula in 2016, reinforced concerns that universities lacked both preventive frameworks and credible grievance redressal mechanisms. Prof. Thorat further noted that at the behest of the then education minister Kapil Sibal, the UGC notified the 2012 regulations, making EOCs mandatory across higher education institutions. Unlike SC/ST Cells, which function under Department of Personnel and Training advisories and deal primarily with recruitment, reservation and service-related issues, EOCs were designed to address campus discrimination, particularly against students.

However, he raised strong objections to the 2026 UGC Promotion of Equity regulations, pointing to serious structural and legal anomalies that could weaken protections against caste-based discrimination in higher education institutions.

One of the first concerns, Prof. Thorat said, is the lack of clarity on the scope of institutions covered under the regulations. “We do not know whether it includes institutions under the Indian Council of Medical Sciences. We do not know whether it includes institutions under the Indian Council of Agricultural Research, agricultural universities and colleges. We do not know whether it includes law universities and colleges which are under the Bar Council,” he said, calling this ambiguity the first anomaly that needs to be removed.

The 2012 regulations, he noted, clearly listed 28 forms of discrimination, outlining behaviours by higher-caste students and authorities that would constitute discrimination. These were based on the Untouchability (Offences) Act of 1955, later renamed the Protection of Civil Rights Act, and were aligned with the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, which itself recognises around 40 forms of discriminatory practices.

Prof. Thorat also raised concerns about the composition and leadership of the Equity Committee. Under the 2026 regulations, the head of the institution is designated as the chairperson of the committee, a provision Prof. Thorat sharply criticised. “The head should not be the chairman,” he said, arguing that the institutional head would effectively be sitting on both sides of the table, recommending punishment and also approving or accepting it. Such an arrangement, he said, compromises impartiality and accountability.

In addition, Prof. Thorat stressed the need for adequate representation of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (SC/ST) on the Equity Committee, warning that without meaningful representation, the committee risks becoming ineffective in addressing caste-based grievances.

Supreme Court Advocate, Disha Wadekar, while talking to The Hindu, said that the call for updating UGC's anti-discrimination regulations from 2012 originated due to repeated cases of discrimination, such as the deaths of Rohith Vemula and Payal Tadvi in 2016 and 2019, respectively. While arguing for the Equity Regulations' violation in the case of Dr. Payal Tadvi, the legal team found that the affected families or student bodies did not know about the existence of the UGC Equity Regulations, 2012.

Responses to the RTIs filed by Makepeace Sitlou and Kushal Nandwani in 2018 and 2019 revealed that as many as half of the institutions failed to respond to the communication sent out by the UGC regarding implementing these regulations.

Ms. Wadekar said, while the 2012 regulations had a strong and detailed definition of discrimination, recognising practices such as delayed scholarships, hostel segregation, and academic bias, the redressal mechanism was deeply flawed. However, complaints were to be handled by a single-member inquiry body headed by an associate professor, raising concerns about independence, power imbalance and student trust. According to the advocate, there were no provisions for interim relief, no safeguards against victimisation during inquiries, no clear complaint procedure, and no requirement to involve criminal law in extreme cases such as suicide following discrimination. Despite being mandatory, the guidelines did not have any implementation value as institutions were free to flout them with impunity.

Thus, Prof. O.R.S. Rao, Chancellor of ICFAI University Sikkim, suggested that these shortcomings need to be understood from a historical perspective. He said, “The first guidelines developed in 2012 were essentially of an advisory kind, primarily targeting SC/ST students. Their aim was to be welfare-centric.” The guidelines suggested the setting-up of SC/ST cells/companies but did not impose any kind of accountability.

“In the last decade or so, there has been immense growth in the sector in the sense that the government has put in initiatives in the education sector, and there has been greater inclusion of the socially and economically weaker sections in premier educational institutions as well,” he added.

One thing the educational institutions found they were not prepared for was the ability to deal with the aspects regarding social integration or acceptance by peer populations or their administrative response.

The UGC released the draft revised regulations in 2025, marking a clear shift from optional guidelines to a structured framework of compliance. According to Prof. Rao, the draft had attempted to clear confusion over institutional responsibility by holding heads of institutions accountable, instead of a series of optional initiatives under the rubric of welfare against discriminatory practices.

However, it received severe criticism. Professor N. Sukumar, Delhi University, pointed out that the 2012 UGC guidelines on caste discrimination were far more detailed and substantive than the subsequent 2025 draft and even the 2026 notified regulations. Drawing on over two decades of academic engagement with caste and higher education, he argued that several critical elements of the 2012 framework, particularly its recognition of the lived and structural nature of caste discrimination have been diluted or entirely omitted in later versions such as in the 2026 UGC regulations is the explicit inclusion of Other Backward Classes (OBCs) within caste-based discrimination protections.

While the 2012 framework primarily addressed complaints from SC and ST students, the new rules formally extend this right to OBC students and employees for the first time.

This change matters because, in higher education itself, OBCs are not a marginal group. According to the latest available All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE) data for 2021–22, SC, ST and OBC students together account for 60.8% of total enrolment in Indian higher education, effectively a majority of the student population.

In absolute numbers, higher education institutions enrolled 1.63 crore OBC students, 66.23 lakh SC students, and 27.1 lakh ST students in 2021–22. Female enrolment has also risen sharply across all three categories, indicating deeper participation rather than symbolic access.

He expressed serious concern over what he described as a deliberate policy shift from explicit caste-based language to a broader “equity” framework. While caste continues to be mentioned within the body of the regulations, its removal from the title and overall framing reflects, in his view, political discomfort with naming caste as a structural problem. This shift, he warned, risks erasing the specificity of caste discrimination, even as caste remains the dominant axis of exclusion in Indian universities.

Building upon sustained pressure and a Supreme Court mandate in September 2025, recommending an early notification, the UGC has framed the regulations of 2026, which, apart from multi-member inquiry committee constitutions, student, and external member recommendations, also propose action against non-compliant universities, an equity helpline, and the deletion of a clause related to a false complaint. OBC has been specifically included, unlike earlier, in the proposed regulations.

Prof. Rao said this was due to public suggestions and now aligned with constitutional provisions and principles. He admitted that denial or poor implementation of OBC reservations also meant institutional discrimination. Prof Rao said the move towards this broader framework was also meant to ensure that no one group is excluded with the diversification of campuses, even as caste defines one key centre of exclusion.

Prof. Sukumar, however, warned that the removal of caste from the title and general framing reflects political discomfort with naming caste as a structural problem. Subsuming caste, gender, disability, and religion under a single equity framework risks the erasure of the specificity of caste discrimination, he argued, even as caste remains the dominant axis of exclusion in Indian universities.

Adv. Wadekar said, “This is less about flexibility and more about legal insulation. By asking Equal Opportunity Centres to issue only an illustrative list, which covers acts like caste slurs, social segregation, discriminatory grading, denial of access, retaliation, or institutional neglect, the regulations avoid clearly defining discrimination at the regulatory level. According to her, this shifts interpretive power to internal committees without clear standards, inviting inconsistency, arbitrariness, and selective enforcement. Under a broad equity framework, caste-based allegations may be read expansively, while counter-claims of bias remain unrecognised.

According to Prof. Vishwanathan Iyer of Great Lakes Institute of Management, “The regulations are trying to address previous failures, but in making it mandatory to create an elaborate institutional architecture that includes Equal Opportunity Centers, Equity Squads, Equity Ambassadors, and establishing a 24X7 help line, monitoring mechanisms, it is overlooking one of its most important jobs, that of providing checks on its own expanding role.”

The movement to a more general model of equity results in conceptual ambiguity as it dispenses with clarity of caste discipline. The removal of penalties for misdeclaration of complaints may place greater emphasis on complainant protection. However, its absence creates moral hazard when applying natural justice principles on grounds of reputational damage being irreversible. The absence of deterrents may therefore counteract complainant protection.

Another set of lingering concerns revolve around impartiality and equity committees' chairmen or members from various institutions such as vice-chancellors and principals in their various organizations.

When asked about the complaints involving senior administrators, Pro ORS Rao explained that the concern can be addressed through internal procedural safeguards. In cases where the head of an institution is implicated, the equity committee meeting can be chaired by another senior member or the EOC coordinator, and the concerned administrator may be asked to step aside for that agenda item. He added that reports in such cases need not be routed to the same authority but can instead be escalated to higher bodies such as the chancellor or governing board.

This, however, did little to appease Prof Vishwanathan Iyer, who responded that treating internal goodwill would mean turning a blind eye to certain inequalities of power, as well as destroying trust. He said, “If we treat internal goodwill, we are ignoring certain inequalities of power and destroying trust as well.” In terms of punishment, there are penalties in terms of withdrawal of funding or derecognition, but there are few protections in terms of procedure in front of individual accusations in such an approach, according to Prof. Iyer, who claimed it.

Outlining the immediate regulatory corrections required, Prof. Thorat said institutions must mandate constitutional and moral education for students to inculcate values of equality, liberty and fraternity. This, he added, must be complemented by strong legal protections, including civil penalties against those found practising discrimination, on the lines of existing anti-ragging provisions. Sensitisation without enforcement, he said, would be ineffective.

Notwithstanding the new committees, helplines, and penalties, Prof. Sukumar cited statistics showing an increase in the past decade in the number of reported cases of discrimination based on caste. He said this shows not more reporting but the failure to enforce laws. He advocated a national-level “social audit” to study enrollment figures, dropouts, suicides, reservation policy, and functioning of equality forums.

As the government gets ready to revamp the process of its own education regulations, uncertainty about a new and fundamentally different regulatory architecture has created grave doubts about how, ultimately, the 2026 rules might be enforced.

For that purpose, it should be noted that at this moment, the development of a new version of the UGC's anti-discrimination provisions may be seen as a response to criticism and a limitation of reforming provisions. It remains to be seen whether it will be more successful than previous ones.

(Uttkarsha Shekhar is an independent journalist whose interests span defence, science, environment, education, entertainment and fashion.)

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Published - January 30, 2026 04:38 pm IST

education / higher education

Source: TheHindu
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