Understanding the UGC Equity Regulations and the Misuse Debate (Part II)

In Part I of this two-part series, the authors addressed the constitutionality of the UGC Regulations. In Part II, they argue that fears of widespread misuse of these provisions are overstated. Much of this concern appears to be shaped by a broader pattern of mistrust toward complaints raised by marginalised caste groups, and there is a limited basis to suggest that such grievance mechanisms would be systematically used for complaints meant for the general category of students. In this part, the authors argue that the anxiety and apprehension pertaining to the misuse of the said regulations is unfounded. In doing so, we examine the misuse discourse from the lens of epistemic injustice and analyse the phenomenon of majoritarian victimhood. They locate this scepticism in broader judicial discourse and subsequently, rebut the misuse anxiety.

The Claim of Misuse: Viewing the Testimonies of the Marginalised with a Credibility Deficit

In the infamous Scottsboro Boys trials of the 1930s, nine Black teenagers were convicted by an all-white jury on deeply contested, insufficient and contradictory evidence, in proceedings where racial prejudice clearly shaped how testimony was judged and whose word was believed, and where prosecutors openly appealed to jurors’ racial emotions rather than evidence. The statements of the defendants were treated as suspect since the very beginning because of their racial identities.  This is emblematic of a routine tendency to consider testimony and lived experiences of marginalised communities as suspect and while distant from the institutional setting of higher education in India, the analogy may sit aptly given the Supreme Court’s own recognition of its complicity in the Report on Judicial Conceptions of Caste (‘Caste Report’), and the already existing data which states that congruence with caste membership affects judicial adjudication.

Miranda Fricker helps make sense of this pattern through what she calls a “credibility deficit.” Fricker explains that socially disadvantaged groups are often assigned less credibility because of stereotypes attached to their identity. Their words are discounted before they are examined. This is a form of epistemic injustice , where prejudice interferes with how knowledge claims are evaluated.  A similar pattern can be observed in how caste-based complaints are often received in Indian institutional settings, where distrust toward marginalised caste voices is frequent. Several anti-caste scholars have studied the impact of such epistemic injustice on students from oppressed caste groups. Anurag Bhaskar draws on Fricker’s framework to show that in a caste-stratified society, the credibility assigned to a speaker’s testimony is never neutral and is filtered through caste. Oppressed-caste voices are routinely discounted or dismissed within institutional settings while dominant-caste perspectives set the terms of what counts as legitimate knowledge. A glaring example is where discourse on merit is divorced from its caste connotations, despite the judicial acknowledgement of the intrinsic and inseparable relationship between merit and privileged social background, and how such seemingly neutral discourse effectuates exclusion. The Supreme Court has since, attempted to change this  by stating that “meritorious candidate is not merely one who is ―talented‖ or ―successful‖ but also one whose appointment fulfils the constitutional goals of uplifting members of the SCs and STs and ensuring a diverse and representative administration.” On the other hand, any attempt of engagement with caste injustice is read through the language of anger and subjectivity.

This scepticism is also reflected in responses to complaints by other marginalised groups, including women, especially those located at the intersection of caste and gender disadvantage. Geetanjali Gangoli employs Fricker’s framework of epistemic injustice to analyse the #MeToo controversy in India, arguing that when younger and Dalit women named their harassers on a public list, their testimonies were met not with belief but with demands for evidence and procedural compliance, a response that itself functioned as a form of testimonial injustice, discounting their accounts on the basis of who they were rather than what they said.

Majoritarian Victimhood Theory

Scholars have drawn attention to a parallel and equally consequential phenomenon, that of majoritarian victimhood, where dominant groups weaponise the language of suffering to consolidate power rather than challenge it. Akhil Kang’sethnographic study of upper caste affect in India shows how victimhood functions as a tool of mobilisation and collectivisation among dominant castes, producing what he calls a “twisted, weaponized form of vulnerability” that simultaneously claims humanity while perpetuating inhumanity toward those below.

As Lilie  Chouliaraki argues, this hierarchy of suffering is structural and shaped by the reality of whose pain is granted visibility and whose is rendered disposable. The misuse complaints against the UGC Regulations reflect this dynamic, where the dominant upper-caste groups are invoking the language of fairness and procedural protection to resist measures designed to address the structural disadvantages faced by the the marginalised lower-caste communities.   In fact, the exercise of these theories are perpetrated in practice and aggravated in educational spaces. The language of misuse functions as a mechanism to delegitimise complaints before they are even filed. The demand for rollback has been premised on the claims of malicious or fake complaints against general category students. Kang’s analysis suggests that this framing derives its force not from any demonstrated pattern of abuse but from the affective register of threatened identity. The effect is to shift the burden of justification onto the marginalised complainant, reproducing the very power asymmetry the Regulations sought to address.

Caste and Educational Spaces

In fact, one could posit that the problematisation of the guidelines rests with the acquisition of disturbing invisibility of caste as considered by the upper castes. This phenomenon allows the upper castes to position themselves as progressive and meritorious while claiming that individuals requiring access to such affirmative measures are backwards and non-meritorious.

N Sukumar’s field research with SC students across metropolitan and non-metropolitan universities shows that campuses frequently develop into socially segregated spaces and become sites of unequal treatment and exclusion. In such a situation, the mere possibility of misuse cannot, by itself, justify resistance to protective measures such as those introduced in the UGC Regulations. Any safeguard can be misused in theory. The more meaningful question is whether the risk of misuse outweighs the scale and persistence of the harm the safeguard is designed to address. The harassment of individuals from lower castes in  a campus setting is well documented, which in turn operates as a deterrent to invoking formal complaint mechanisms. Therefore, scholars recommend proactive state action to create a space which is accessible and allows redressal without fear of reprisal or marginalisation. In sum, the absence of a non-retaliatory provision that does not penalise ‘fake cases’ seeks to achieve precisely this objective. In fact, scholars have persistently argued that the objective of an anti-discriminatory approach must be rooted in the anti-subordination theory. This theory aims to eliminate systematic discrepancies by prohibiting laws that deter the attainment of goals and mechanisms that fulfil the goals of substantive equality. Any interpretation otherwise would divorce an individual from markers of their social identity (herein, caste), thus making it superficial and risks being too individualistic. Any state action, therefore, must be in pursuance of uplifting socially marginalised and disadvantaged communities, which is the primary objective of the guidelines.

Caste and Judicial Discourse

Vijay Kishore Tiwari has analysed this phenomenon of credibility deficit by referring to judicial discourses surrounding the alleged misuse of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act (‘PoA Act’). For instance, in Subhash Kashinath Mahajan v State of Maharashtra, the Supreme Court described the Act as being used primarily for “blackmail” and “personal vengeance,” and even suggested that its operation could end up perpetuating caste divisions. In other decisions, complainants under the Act have been described as “scheming” or “unscrupulous.” These remarks reveal the recurring suspicion and mistrust shown towards complainant testimonies under a law that has been enacted for the purpose of addressing the entrenched structural vulnerability.

The Supreme Court in its Caste Report found that it has over the decades, made statements about caste grounded in stereotypes rather than evidence, with observations like the one in State of Kerala v NM Thomas warning against grinding “the wheels of Government to a halt in the name of harijan welfare,” reinforcing the idea that dominant caste concerns are inherently credible while oppressed caste claims are suspect. The 2026 UGC Regulations, themselves born from a Supreme Court mandate following years of documented discrimination, were met with the same suspicion, with the court raising hypotheticals about false complaints by oppressed caste students without any data before it to support those fears, its observations closely mirroring what dominant caste protesters were saying on the streets.

Much of the present misuse discourse surrounding the 2026 UGC Regulations can be traced to this broader pattern of credibility scepticism. Judicial scepticism and dominant caste protest rhetoric feed from the same source, reflecting a shared anxiety about what it would mean for oppressed caste students to have a credible institutional mechanism to name discrimination and demand redress. Courts legitimise this anxiety, by giving it the weight of legal authority.

Rebutting the Misuse Argument

Almost every internal complaint-based mechanism, for instance the Internal Complaints Committee under the sexual harassment framework or the current Equal Opportunity Centre constituted under these Regulations, carries some possibility of reputational impact which has previously never been treated as a sufficient reason to dismantle protective structures. The relevant question is whether the speculative possibility of reputational injury outweighs the documented and systemic harm of discrimination that often goes unreported.

Even otherwise, the petition’s argument and the Court’s scepticism that there is a real possibility of significant misuse fall flat because the UGC Regulations themselves incorporate procedural safeguards against such misuse. Clause 8 of the Regulations posits that upon complaint, the Equity committee must decide the course of action within twenty-four hours with the authority to refer that the  matter may be referred  to another statutory committee. This is followed by a report to the Head of the Institution within fifteen working days which initiates further course of action.

This structure ensures that no adverse action is taken without adequate inquiry. Implicit within this framework is the requirement of notice and an opportunity to be heard before any institutional decision is finalised. Complaints are therefore not mechanically acted upon to the prejudice of the person against whom they are filed. When these safeguards are already in place, there is clear scope for objective scrutiny and for the respondent to present their version of events. In that context, the apprehension that the Regulations will inevitably be used to cause harassment or reputational harm does not sufficiently account for the procedural protections embedded within the framework itself.

Moreover, one of the primary reasons institutions continue to function as sites of caste-based discrimination is institutional apathy and inaction. In that context, the legally binding nature of these Regulations, coupled with greater accessibility for vulnerable sections to register complaints, enhances institutional accountability. It does not, by itself, amount to a disproportionate threat to institutional reputation.

Penalisation for false complaints is also not a desirable measure. Determining what counts as a false complaint is rarely straightforward and often involves a significant degree of discretion on the part of the deciding authority. As discussed earlier, complaints coming from marginalised communities are already frequently met with institutional scepticism. In such a setting, a penal clause tied to falsity can end up reinforcing existing biases rather than filtering only malicious cases. The Regulations deal directly with student complaints, and in many such cases, formal proof is hard to come by even when discrimination is actually experienced. Students may not have documents, recordings, or institutional support to back their claims. If an unsuccessful complaint can lead to penalties, the risk shifts onto the complainant instead of the discriminator. In practice, that kind of rule can discourage students from reporting harm at all. Fear of punishment for not being able to conclusively prove what happened can silence genuine grievances and weaken the purpose of the protection itself. Moreover, higher acquittal rates are often taken as evidence to advance the misuse narrative surrounding laws enacted to protect vulnerable groups. However, this discourse is misplaced. Many cases end in acquittal for a myriad of reasons: poor investigation, delayed charge sheets, hostile witnesses, intimidation, weak prosecution, or institutional bias. This has itself been acknowledged in Hariram Bhambhi v Satyanarayan wherein Justice DY Chandrachud stated that a perception that acquittal under such beneficial acts correlates to misuse, is an erroneous assumption since acquittal could depend on multitude of other factors such as improper. In fact, the presumption that individuals from lower castes are prone to lodge false complaints has been held to violate fundamental human equality. This opinion was espoused by Justice Arun Mishra in  Prithvi Raj Chauhan v Union of India, where he stated that to assume that an individual from marginalised caste background would lodge a false complaint is insulting to their dignity. Importantly, Justice Arun Mishra said, “merely by the fact that person may misuse provisions cannot be a ground to treat class with doubt.”

In fact, Sthabir Khora  has gone as far as to argue that misuse of the PoA Act is attributable to upper castes and the underlying social realities faced by lower caste individuals. This occurs primarily in two instances: firstly, where the complainant undergoes a reversal of their legal positioning i.e from a respondent to a complainant, through mechanisms such as counter-complaints and secondly, where such a reversal aggravates the already precarious power asymmetry between the parties and often leads to a withdrawal of the case. Combined, this intensifies the underlying trust deficit and entrenched bias that lower castes experience before the judiciary. In fact, even in instances where the judiciary has been consistent in indicating the ‘misuse’ of POA, the same has been erroneous, and has been marked by a selective interpretation of the National Crime Records Bureau data..

Limitations of the Regulations

The Regulations can certainly benefit from improvements, such as the broad discretion given to the Head of the Institution in constituting committees and adjudicating complaints, which raises concerns about neutrality and fairness. As of July 2023, among 45 central universities in India, there were only 1 SC, 1 ST, and 5 OBC vice-chancellors. In the overwhelming majority of Indian universities, then, complaints of caste discrimination are adjudicated by administrators with no lived experience of such discrimination.

The consequences of this lack of representation are well-documented. In the Thorat Committee Report, about 84 per cent respondents mentioned that their caste background was asked by examiners either directly or indirectly and about 84 per cent mentioned that their grades were affected because of their caste background. This demographic shows how important formal mechanisms are. In 2025, UGC reported that of India’s 58,643 higher education institutions, grievance cell data was available from only 3,522. Caste functions within modern institutions as a hidden system of social capital and exclusion, rather than as a visible ritualized hierarchy – which is why informal, culture-dependent complaint resolution fails those it is meant to protect.

That said, formal mechanisms are necessary but not fully sufficient. The broad discretion vested in the Head of the Institution to constitute committees remains a real vulnerability given the representational data above, and cells without genuine autonomy often hesitate to act against senior faculty, reducing grievance mechanisms to procedural formalities.

Furthermore, greater clarity on standards of proof and evidentiary thresholds could also strengthen the framework. However, setting out an exhaustive list of reforms is not the purpose of this blog. The Regulations serve an important function in making complaints against discrimination accessible in institutions where such discrimination remains widespread and in providing a structured platform for redressal. In this context, restricting the positives that this scheme has to offer on the basis of speculative apprehensions of misuse risks reinforcing a troubling narrative that approaches the testimonies of the marginalised with excessive scepticism, especially where procedural safeguards already exist to prevent misuse.

Conclusion

The  Supreme Court’s decision to stay the UGC Regulations arguably reflects an exceptional and premature decision which lies in contrast with its own jurisprudence. As the authors write, the UGC Regulations are not constitutionally suspect but rather, in substance, effectively seek to address the question of caste discrimination in college campuses by constituting committees and a better complaint redressal mechanism. The UGC Regulations effectively only institutionalise these constitutional commitments and advocate for a response to caste-based discrimination in educational institutions. As such, they become an instrument to further the project of equality that the Constitution demands. The strong emphasis on the possibility of misuse in debates surrounding the UGC regulations risks reinforcing a disturbing pattern. It reflects a tendency to subject the testimonies of vulnerable communities to heightened scrutiny and to approach them with a deficit of trust. The UGC Regulations respond to the deeply troubling rise of caste-based discrimination on Indian campuses and remain closely aligned with the Constitution’s commitment to substantive equality under Articles 14, 15, and 16.

This article does not claim that the Regulations are beyond criticism. They can certainly benefit from the refinements discussed above. However, the apprehensions surrounding them, including those that have found some resonance with the Court, do not draw firm support from established constitutional jurisprudence. Instead, they reveal a deeper structural habit of viewing the vulnerable not primarily as rights-bearing individuals in need of protection, but as potential suspects whose claims are met with instinctive doubt.