UGC ignored parl panel advice on equity rules: Diggy

Bhopal: Former chief minister and Rajya Sabha MP Digvijaya Singh, chairman of Parliament's Standing Committee on Education, accused the University Grants Commission on Thursday of ignoring the panel's recommendations to strengthen new UGC equity guidelines against caste discrimination, leaving institutions to judge complaints at their discretion.

Singh's panel unanimously urged the draft regulations, prompted by Supreme Court nudges after the suicides of Payal Tadvi and Rohith Vemula, to explicitly define caste-based harassment—including for Other Backward Classes (OBCs) under Articles 15(4) and 15(5)—and add disability as a discrimination axis. It called for expanding the 10-member Equity Committee beyond one mandatory woman, one SC, and one ST member to reflect 50% reservations for SCs, STs, and OBCs in faculty and students; listing specific discriminatory practices (as in 2012 rules) to curb misuse; mandating annual public disclosure of cases; and requiring sensitization programs, mental health support, and legal aid at higher education institutions. The UGC's final January 2026 regulations rejected the panel's push to identify discrimination instances and boost reserved-category representation, Singh said.


Digvijaya Singh defended, "The protests against the Regulations are by General category students and largely concentrated on two issues -

The removal of provisions that existed in the draft Regulations which penalised students for lodging false cases of discrimination. General category students believe that this may result in the filing of fake cases of caste bias against General category students and faculty. However, the decision to remove this provision was made by the UGC and had nothing to do with the Parliamentary Committee's report."

He further argued that the Regulations list only SC, ST, and OBC as categories that can face caste discrimination. "General category students claim that by excluding the General category, the UGC Regulations implicitly argue that it is the General category students who commit caste discrimination. The decision to not include General category students was also made by the UGC. The Committee's report made no comment on the inclusion of General category in the list of communities that can face caste discrimination," he said in the post on X.

He claimed, "In fact, clarifying what acts and instances count as discrimination would not just strengthen protections for students, but also dilute the possibility of the regulations being misused as an instrument to lodge fake cases. This is what the Committee had asked the UGC to do but the UGC chose to ignore. It is now entirely up to the UGC and the Ministry of Education to bring resolution to this issue."