{"id":193646,"date":"2026-01-30T10:20:00","date_gmt":"2026-01-30T05:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/?p=193646"},"modified":"2026-01-30T10:20:00","modified_gmt":"2026-01-30T05:20:00","slug":"vague-capable-of-misuse-indian-sc-stays-new-ugc-caste-equity-regulations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/2026\/01\/30\/vague-capable-of-misuse-indian-sc-stays-new-ugc-caste-equity-regulations.html","title":{"rendered":"\u201cVague, capable of misuse\u201d: Indian SC stays new UGC caste equity regulations"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-193647\" src=\"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/assests\/2026\/01\/UGC.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"609\" height=\"374\" srcset=\"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/assests\/2026\/01\/UGC.jpg 609w, https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/assests\/2026\/01\/UGC-358x220.jpg 358w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 609px) 100vw, 609px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>New Delhi: Terming as \u201cvague and capable of misuse\u201d, the Indian Supreme Court put in abeyance the University Grants Commission (Promotion of Equity in Higher Education Institutions) Regulations, 2026, that triggered widespread protests on educational campuses across the country.<\/p>\n<p>According to Kashmir Media Service, a Bench of Chief Justice of India Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi said, \u201cIf we don\u2019t intervene, it will lead to dangerous impacts\u2026. It will divide society and will have grave impacts.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Bench issued notices to the New Delhi and the UGC on petitions challenging the UGC\u2019s controversial regulation, which restricted caste-based discrimination grievance mechanisms to SC, ST and OBC categories. The top court posted the matter for further hearing on March 19. Solicitor General Tushar Mehta accepted the notice on behalf of the Centre.<\/p>\n<p>Exercising its plenary powers under Article 142 of the Constitution, the Bench, however, revived the UGC\u2019s 2012 regulations on the issues to ensure that the victims of caste discrimination were not left without any remedy.<\/p>\n<p>The court strongly disapproved of the idea of having separate hostels for SC and ST students. \u201cFor God\u2019s sake, don\u2019t do that,\u201d CJI Kant said.<\/p>\n<p>The Bench clubbed three petitions filed by Vineet Jindal, Rahul Dewan and others with an earlier petition pending in the top court. \u201cSince issues raised in 2019 plea shall also have bearing while examining constitutionality&#8230; let these petitions be tagged with the same,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n<p>The Bench proposed to set up a committee of experts to examine the issues involved. \u201cPrima facie, we say that the language of the regulation is vague and experts need to look into the language to be modulated so that it is not exploited,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n<p>The Bench sought to know why \u201ccaste-based discrimination\u201d has been separately defined when the definition of \u201cdiscrimination\u201d already took care of all forms of discriminatory treatment. It also wondered why ragging has been left out of the new UGC regulations.<\/p>\n<p>The court order came after advocate Vishnu Shankar Jain pointed out on behalf of the petitioners that the new UGC regulations treated general category students as criminals and that such regulations would vitiate the environment on college campuses.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>New Delhi: Terming as \u201cvague and capable of misuse\u201d, the Indian Supreme Court put in abeyance the University Grants Commission (Promotion of Equity in Higher Education Institutions) Regulations, 2026, that triggered widespread protests on educational campuses across the country. According to Kashmir Media Service, a Bench of Chief Justice of India Surya Kant and Justice &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":193647,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[5],"class_list":["post-193646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-india","tag-top-story"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/assests\/2026\/01\/UGC.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193646"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193646\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":193648,"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193646\/revisions\/193648"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/193647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}