Why UGC guidelines cannot be caste-neutral, lawyer who fought for them explains
Many upper-caste protestors opposing the University Grants Commission’s new guidelines against discrimination have demanded that the rules be made caste-neutral.
But lawyer Disha Wadekar said there is no point to the regulations if they are made caste-neutral. “Then they will have to be gender neutral, they will have to be disabilities neutral, so everyone can file complaints against everyone,”…
Wadekar pointed out that the UGC’s Redressal of Grievances of Students Regulations, 2023, which has also been mentioned in the 2026 guidelines, allow any student to file a complaint of victimisation. “So what is this uproar that ‘we don’t have a redressal’?”
.
.
In the realm of the law and regulations, have you even seen anything like caste neutrality when it comes to the question of caste discrimination?
Not at all. Caste is a group identity, and it is based on this group identity that an individual is discriminated against.
Are they denying any form of group identity in this country, which is an ascribed status shaped by historical disadvantages, untouchability and patriarchy? There are these identities that are inflexible, therefore we call these associations as group associations or group identity.
So is this an attempt to say that in this country we will not recognise any of us? And is that non-recognition therefore only caste specific? Or is it also going to apply to gender, because gender is also an ascriptive identity. To some extent it could be fluid but it is still an ascriptive identity.
The stay on the new regulations has led the Supreme Court to revert back to the 2012 UGC regulations which were in operation when Rohith Vemula and Payal Tadvi died by suicide, allegedly after being subjected to caste discrimination on campus. They have also been operational in the last five years, during which UGC data says that caste-based discrimination has risen by 118%. Why do you think the 2012 regulations failed to address caste-based discrimination in higher education institutions?
There is enough evidence to show that the 2012 regulations were completely ineffective. I remember Payal’s mother Abeda Tadvi, who is a petitioner in the Supreme Court, kept saying that they did not have any recourse, that they kept approaching college authorities who would send them back with all the representations and letters that they would take to them. And finally, because they didn’t have any recourse, Payal took this step.
That got us thinking whether there was an equal opportunity cell and whether these equity regulations were being implemented by Payal’s college or her university. And of course, they were not. And that was not specific to Payal’s college, 90% of the colleges and universities in the country did not have something like an operational equal opportunity cell or an equity committee. When institutional heads and VCs were asked are you even aware of something like this, they were not aware.
When the mother of Rohith Vemula, Radhika Vemula, and Abeda Tadvi approached you all as lawyers, seeking reform in anti-discrimination policy in higher education institutions, what was their main vision and how was that translated into the petition?
It actually started with me being Abeda Tadvi’s lawyer in Payal Tadvi’s case. In the conversations that we had, the mother kept showing me all these representations that she was writing to the authorities, for almost an entire year. It’s not that Payal decided to take her life suddenly. It was because of harassment that had been happening for over a year.
The response of the authorities would be to send the Tadvis back and not take any action. She thought, what is my recourse? I will approach the authorities. But then they shut their door. And then they didn’t have an equal opportunity cell or an equity committee. So you have doors shut from everywhere. There is a reason why Payal committed suicide.
So we thought, what if there was an equal opportunity cell? Maybe there could have been some action taken, even if it was a whitewashed committee…When we looked at all the available legal safeguards, we found these equity regulations. There was something that already existed on paper but not in practice. So, our work was about translating that from a formal paper law to something that can actually be implemented and can actually work in institutions.
Why is it that only in 2026 people are outraged about the regulations, when the regulations have been there since 2012?
This is because both these enforcement mechanisms, the monitoring committee and the non-compliance clause, have now been added to the equity regulations, which means that colleges and universities will have to implement it. That is the reason for the outrage…