The caste question of discrimination and Editor’s pick (January): A weekly round-up on Constitution First

The Supreme Court’s stay on the UGC (Promotion of Equity in Higher Education Institutions) Regulations, 2026 on January 29, marks yet another instance where India's top court has retreated from confronting caste discrimination head-on, despite mounting evidence of its devastating consequences in our higher education institutions.

The Regulations were themselves born from litigation. In 2019, Radhika Vemula and Abeda Tadvi, mothers of Rohith Vemula and Payal Tadvi, both of whom died by suicide after facing alleged caste discrimination, approached the Supreme Court, arguing that the 2012 UGC Equity Regulations were inadequately implemented. Their petition coincided with another case, Amit Kumar v. Union of India, arising from the deaths of two Dalit students at IIT Delhi in 2023. These cases represented an opportunity for the Court to reckon with the structural factors behind student suicides across India's higher education spaces.

This week, in The Leaflet, Niranjan K.S. examined how the Supreme Court, even while constituting a National Task Force to address student suicides and mental health, systematically avoided naming caste as a contributory factor. The Amit Kumar order of January 15, he notes, “refrains from mentioning the word ‘caste’ or even ‘Scheduled Castes’.”

The new UGC Regulations attempted to rectify some lacunae of the 2012 version explicitly defining “caste-based discrimination” as discrimination against members of Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and Other Backward Classes, and establishing detailed grievance redressal mechanisms. Yet, within weeks, protests erupted, claiming the Regulations were “exclusionary” for not protecting “general or upper castes” from discrimination, an argument that fundamentally misunderstands both substantive equality and fifty years of Indian constitutional jurisprudence since N.M. Thomas (1975).

What is particularly alarming about the Supreme Court's stay order is its failure to apply settled law. The Court did not engage with the three-pronged test based on a prima facie case, irreparable injury, and balance of convenience for granting stays. Instead, it cited “vagueness” and “possibility of misuse,” a standard the Court has repeatedly rejected in civil liberties cases. The four questions it framed for adjudication reveal no compelling case for a stay. If anything, they demonstrate whether the absence of “ragging” in anti-discrimination regulations amounts to a “regressive omission” when ragging is addressed under separate UGC regulations brought out in 2009; and worrying about “segregation” when the provision clearly refers to transparent allocation in mentorship programs and scholarships. By staying these Regulations and reverting to the 2012 version, the Court has legitimized a dangerous notion that protecting marginalized communities somehow discriminates against dominant castes. 

Perhaps the most damning question is the one that Niranjan poses: “How, and to what extent, can the Supreme Court confront the 'caste' issue head on when it comes to the life, education and aspirations of millions of students from marginalised communities?”