The University Grants Commission (UGC), India’s apex higher education body, unveiled a set of new guidelines, on 13 January 2026, presumably with an intent to overhaul its regulatory framework for higher education institutions (HEIs) across the country. Purportedly aimed at promoting equal treatment, fairness, and inclusion, the new guidelines titled ‘University Grants Commission (Promotion of Equity in Higher Education Institutions) Regulations, 2026’, were designed to replace the older, largely advisory “anti-discrimination" provisions of 2012 and make inclusion a legally binding obligation on all HEIs.

The new UGC guidelines came as a bolt from the blue for students, faculty, and administrators associated with higher education across India, as these guidelines ostensibly aimed at eradicating “discrimination" specifically focused on certain caste and class categories — Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, socially and educationally backward classes, economically weaker sections, and people with disabilities — while ignoring and undermining the position of the rest, primarily the unreserved upper castes or the general category (GC).

The new UGC guidelines are, therefore, premised on an assumption that there can be no discrimination against the unreserved castes or GC students and that people belonging to these castes do not need any legally binding provisions to protect them. Moreover, the guidelines do not contain any provisions for punishing those who file false complaints with malafide intent to harass or harm people belonging to the unreserved sections. Several such fake complaints have been filed in the past based purely on personal vendetta, and with no legal recourse available to the unreserved, many have had to either pay damages or face severe consequences. The new UGC guidelines could most certainly make matters worse.

These rules, supposedly intended to promote equity and inclusion amongst all stakeholders in HEIs, are not only inherently flawed but also promote reverse discrimination — a concept most woke Indians obsessed with the Western caste-class narrative would like to surreptitiously brush under the carpet, but one that needs to be discussed and debated with as much sincerity as discrimination of depressed castes.

The UGC’s miscalculated manoeuvre backfired as the new guidelines came under heavy criticism from several quarters, stirring protests across the country — in universities, colleges, and even in front of the UGC headquarters at Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg, New Delhi. While the regulatory body shied away from making any statements, the Union Minister of Education, Dharmendra Pradhan, came out in support of the guidelines claiming that the government would “ensure" that no one is harmed, an unconvincing statement........

© News18