Sanjeev Ahluwalia | UGC: Hawkishly ‘Woke’ Or Just Politically Motivated?

Teachers and parents have an overweight influence on shaping young minds by their thoughts and their behaviour. It is reasonable then to expect an elevated level of due diligence from both sets of “guardians” in discharging their responsibilities versus their wards. India is a land of divergent identities, religions, castes, languages and culture. Unsurprisingly then, “equity” is an abiding central theme in the Indian Constitution.

The University Grants Commission (UGC), created under a 1956 Union government legislation, regulates all universities and colleges, collectively referred to as Higher Education Institutions (HEI). There are 1,270 such universities and 14,725 colleges serving millions of students. Since 2012, the UGC has implemented a regulation titled “Promotion of Equity in Higher Educational Institutions”.

In January, this year a new UGC regulation was notified. It built upon the earlier regulation from 2012, that sought to safeguard the interests of students without any prejudice to their caste, creed, religion, language, ethnicity, gender or disability.

The earlier regulation was long on defining discrimination comprehensively, identifying the prohibited actions or behaviour as markers of active discrimination but was short on monitoring, measuring, reporting and dealing with discrimination.

These deficiencies were sought to be overcome by the new January 13, 2026 UGC regulation which was commendable in trying to deepen and institutionalise the mechanisms for embedding equity and ending discrimination in higher education.

Consider that one anti-discrimination officer per HEI, under the 2012 regulation, was replaced by an Equal Opportunity Centre (EOC) with a designated co-ordinator who doubles as the secretary of an Equal Opportunity Committee, chaired by the head of the HEI. Three internal faculty members and one staffer were members as were two meritorious students from the HEI and two external members from civil society. This single change, suitably broadened the structure for sharing administrative power and responsibility, including for adequately protecting a complainant.

Further, internal Equity Squads were envisaged to exercise vigilance and monitor vulnerable spots to prevent discrimination. An Equity Ambassador was to be nominated in each department and facility of the HEI, thereby creating an ecosystem of equity supporters, all of whom would also feed ground-up information to the EOC.

Timelines for management of incidents of discrimination ensured quick redressal.

The EOC would meet within twenty-four hours of an incident of discrimination, report within fifteen days to the head of the HEI, who would act on the report within seven days. All cases inviting penal action under the law would be reported forthwith to the police by the HEI.

The envisaged EOC was far more initiative-taking than earlier arrangements. It was expected to co-ordinate with civil society, local media, police, district administration, non-government organisations working in the field, faculty members, staff, and parents to further its aims. It would also coordinate with the District Legal Services Authority and the State Legal Services Authority to provide legal aid in deserving cases.

Monitoring arrangements to periodically ascertain the efficiency of the proposed institutional arrangements were also embedded. The EOC would publish a bi-annual report of its activities and make it available on the website of the HEI along with updates on the demographic composition of students and staff, dropout rates of the students for the previous academic year, grievances/complaints received under these regulations, and their status.

Each HEI was expected to establish and operate a 24x7 “Equity Helpline”. If this was not possible, the equity helpline of the affiliating university must be accessible to the stakeholders of that college. Most importantly, the identity of a stakeholder (identified broadly to include faculty, staff and students) reporting a violation of equity was to be kept confidential if requested by the informant.

Implementation of the 2026 regulations would have been good for society, and the often-vitiated environment in colleges and universities. But this was not to be. There was an immediate negative reaction from upper caste students and supporters who labelled the new regulation as an attempt to sideline upper caste interests. What roused their ire? Four provisions of the regulations were objected against.

First, that regulation 3 (c) defines caste-based discrimination “exclusively” as discrimination against Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Castes. By explicitly including Other Backward Castes but overlooking upper castes it promoted a perverted interpretation of the regulation, potentially enshrining rather than reducing discrimination. This is more so as regulation 3 (e) defines “discrimination” more broadly and correctly as “any unfair, differential, or biased treatment or any such act against any stakeholder, whether explicit or implicit, on the grounds only of religion, race, caste, gender, place of birth, disability, or any of them.

Second, with a spate of state-level elections during the year, the new regulation was identified as an attempt to woo the reserved categories of voters (OBC, SC and ST), who far outnumber the unreserved voters.

Third, since it enlarged the regulatory ambit significantly, it would have been appropriate to also discourage malicious complaints specifically, with punitive provisions to deter frivolous or motivated grievances and complaints. Complaints have increased from 173 cases in 2019-20 to 378 in 2023-24, not too high versus the population of students which could be multiple millions. With more supportive mechanisms for registering complaints, the numbers could explode.

Expectedly, the Supreme Court has stayed the 2026 regulation on January 29, responding to three petitions, and used its powers under Article 142 to revive the 2012 regulations which had been repealed when the 2026 regulations became effective. This automatically puts in abeyance the attempt by the UGC to deepen the scope of prohibitions against discrimination in educational institutions and enlarge the apparatus for identification, monitoring and effective prevention of discrimination in higher education institutions.

Leaving aside the legal matter of the less than perfect drafting, which ignited the apprehensions of the upper castes, and caused the regulations to be put in abeyance, two issues remain unresolved.

Who done it?

Was the drafting genuinely incompetent and muddled? If yes, how effective are our parliamentary systems, to prevent defective legislation from sailing through? Or was it a case of the executive turning a Nelson’s eye to contradictory provisions within the same legislation, to cater to political messaging, at a time when state Assembly elections dominate, hoping that the judiciary would do the right thing and carry the political blame? The first is genuinely troubling. The second, however, is somewhat oddly reassuring.

The writer is Distinguished Fellow, Chintan Research Foundation, and was earlier with the IAS and the World Bank