What is needed is not a polarising reclassification, but a balanced, campus-wide anti-discrimination framework.

The Supreme Court has done well to press the pause button on the University Grants Commission’s new regulations on equity in higher education. By staying the guidelines and directing institutions to continue with the 2012 framework, the Court has averted what was fast turning into a combustible social moment, especially on university campuses already strained by ideological and identity-based fault lines. The UGC’s initiative had raised hackles almost immediately. Protests by general category students in Delhi University were an early warning sign. In UP and elsewhere, the resentment threatened to snowball into a nationwide agitation reminiscent of the turmoil that followed the implementation of the Mandal Commission recommendations in the early 1990s.

The two-member Bench, headed by the Chief Justice, was right to invoke Article 142 to maintain the status quo. The continuation of the 2012 regulations ensures that there is no regulatory vacuum while the Court examines the larger constitutional and social implications of the new rules. The Court’s pointed observation—whether the nation was regressing instead of progressing—should trouble policymakers and citizens alike. There can be no disagreement on the core principle: university and college campuses must be free of discrimination.

Students are there to learn, to debate, and to grow—not to become victims of prejudice. The problem with the impugned regulations lies not in their stated intent but in their flawed premise. By implicitly assuming that only students belonging to Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and Other Backward Classes can be victims of discrimination, the guidelines reduce a complex social reality to a narrow and potentially divisive formula. Discrimination does not wear a single caste label. Upper-caste students, too, can be bullied or targeted—whether in classrooms, hostels or informal campus spaces.

Beyond caste, campuses have witnessed discrimination based on gender, religion, language, food habits, and ethnicity. Any regulatory framework that ignores these lived realities is bound to be questioned. Institutions must be empowered to act swiftly, fairly, and transparently against discrimination. As experience shows, the certainty of punishment is far more effective as a deterrent than the severity of punishment. In this respect, the 2012 regulations were more inclusive in scope. They recognised multiple grounds of discrimination and provided a defined complaint mechanism with timelines.

That said, the older framework was far from being flawless. It failed to address the problem of false complaints and placed excessive reliance on internal enquiries, often more concerned with protecting institutional image than delivering justice to victims. As the Court rightly observed, the remedy proposed by the new regulations appeared worse than the disease. The task before the UGC and the Centre is clear. What is needed is not a polarising reclassification, but a balanced, campus-wide anti-discrimination framework that is inclusive, credible, and fair to all.