Pallab Bhattacharyya
(Pallab Bhattacharyya is a former director-general of police, Special Branch and erstwhile Chairman, APSC. Views expressed by him is personal. He can be reached at pallab1959@hotmail.com)
The recent notification of the University Grants Commission (Promotion of Equity in Higher Education Institutions) Regulations, 2026, has marked a decisive and contentious moment in the evolution of Indian higher education. Framed as a response to decades of institutional discrimination and shaped by judicial scrutiny, the new regulations go far beyond their 2012 predecessor in both ambition and enforcement. They attempt to transform equity from a moral aspiration into a binding regulatory obligation. Yet, in doing so, they have also triggered sharp controversy, public protests, constitutional challenges, and deep anxieties about fairness, misuse, and administrative overreach. The debate surrounding the regulations reveals not just disagreement over policy design but a deeper national unease about how India confronts caste, power, and justice within its universities.
The origins of the current framework lie in the inadequacies of the earlier UGC Equity Regulations of 2012. Those rules were born in the aftermath of the Thorat Committee’s investigation into caste-based discrimination at AIIMS, New Delhi, which exposed a hostile academic and social environment for Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe students. The 2012 regulations mandated the creation of Equal Opportunity Cells and the appointment of Anti-Discrimination Officers, formally acknowledging that discrimination was not an aberration but a structural problem. However, over time, these mechanisms proved largely ineffective. They lacked enforceable timelines, meaningful accountability, and punitive consequences for non-compliance. In many institutions, compliance became a matter of paperwork rather than practice, even as complaints of discrimination continued to rise.
This institutional failure acquired tragic visibility through a series of student deaths, most notably those of Rohith Vemula in 2016 and Dr. Payal Tadvi in 2019. These cases galvanized public conscience and judicial attention, culminating in a public interest litigation filed by their mothers, who argued that the state had failed in its constitutional duty to protect vulnerable students. The Supreme Court’s sustained engagement with the issue proved to be the real catalyst for change. Through a series of orders, the Court emphasized that anti-discrimination regulations must be effective in practice and not merely symbolic. It demanded data on the functioning of Equal Opportunity Cells, highlighted widespread non-compliance, and eventually endorsed a stringent, time-bound, and accountable framework proposed by the petitioners.
The result was the 2026 regulations, notified in January 2026, which completely replace the 2012 rules. The new framework reimagines equity enforcement as a continuous, institution-wide process rather than a single-officer responsibility. It introduces multiple layers of oversight, including Equity Committees chaired by heads of institutions, Equity Squads tasked with vigilance in vulnerable spaces, Equity Ambassadors embedded at the departmental level, a 24/7 equity helpline, and an Ombudsperson for appeals. Complaint redressal has been placed on an emergency footing, with strict timelines that require action within hours and days rather than months. Most significantly, the UGC has armed itself with punitive powers, including the ability to withhold funding, block new academic programmes, and even withdraw institutional recognition for persistent non-compliance.
Supporters of the regulations have hailed them as a long-overdue correction to the culture of impunity that has allowed discrimination to fester on campuses. For marginalized students, the promise of swift action, confidentiality, protection from victimisation, and direct accountability of vice-chancellors and principals represents a radical shift in institutional power dynamics. The regulations also align closely with the National Education Policy 2020, which places equity and inclusion at the heart of educational excellence, signalling that student well-being and dignity are now integral to quality assurance.
Yet the very features that make the regulations powerful have also made them polarising. The sharpest controversy revolves around the definition of caste-based discrimination, which explicitly anchors protection to Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and Other Backward Classes. Critics argue that this creates a hierarchy of victims and excludes students from unreserved categories who may also experience caste-based hostility. Several petitions before the Supreme Court contend that this approach violates the constitutional guarantee of equality by denying equal institutional protection. Defenders of the regulation counter that the Constitution itself mandates special protection for historically oppressed groups and that treating unequal realities as equal would only perpetuate injustice.
Another flashpoint has been the removal of a proposed clause penalising false complaints. While the government and the UGC have justified this decision on the grounds that fear of punishment would deter genuine victims from coming forward, opponents see it as creating procedural asymmetry. In an already polarised campus environment, they argue, the absence of safeguards against malicious allegations could lead to misuse, reputational harm, and a climate of fear among faculty and students alike. These concerns have spilt onto the streets, with protests in several states, the branding of the regulations as a “black law”, and even the resignation of a senior bureaucrat in protest. The Union government has sought to reassure critics that the regulations will not be misused and that discrimination against any individual will not be tolerated, but the unease persists.
The controversy also raises practical questions about implementation. Smaller colleges and under-resourced institutions have expressed doubts about their capacity to meet the stringent timelines and staffing requirements mandated by the regulations. The transformation of the UGC from a funding and advisory body into a strict enforcement authority has altered the federal balance between regulator and institution, prompting fears of excessive centralization and bureaucratic intrusion into academic life.
As India grapples with these tensions, global best practices offer valuable insights into how equity regimes can combine strong protection with universal procedural fairness. The United Kingdom’s Equality Act 2010, for instance, operates through a unified framework of protected characteristics and places a proactive duty on universities to foster good relations among all groups, not just to respond to complaints. South Africa’s higher education system, shaped by the legacy of apartheid, emphasizes redress through restorative justice and uses the widely adopted four-A framework of availability, accessibility, acceptability, and adaptability to assess inclusion. In the United States, independent equity audits under frameworks like Title IX focus on institutional patterns rather than isolated incidents, shifting the conversation from identity-based charges (Aarop) to data-driven reform.
For India, the challenge ahead lies not in rolling back the 2026 regulations, but in refining them so that they command broad legitimacy while remaining uncompromising in their core purpose. Incorporating conduct-based definitions of discrimination, introducing independent equity audits, strengthening restorative mechanisms, and ensuring safeguards against both victimisation and misuse could help bridge the current divide. If informed by global experience and grounded in constitutional values, the new equity regime has the potential to move Indian campuses away from cycles of denial and protest toward a culture of trust, accountability, and genuine inclusion.