A petition asked for UGC’s anti-discrimination rules to be enforced. UGC diluted the rules instead

In August 2019, Radhika Vemula and Abeda Salim Tadvi, the mothers of Rohith Vemula and Payal Tadvi, filed a public interest litigation in the Supreme Court.

The petitioners, both of whose children had died by suicide, allegedly after being subjected to caste discrimination in the campuses in which they were studying, made a list of demands aimed at combating discrimination in Indian educational institutions.

Key among these demands was the enforcement of 2012 University Grants Commission regulations that sought to protect vulnerable students from discriminatory behaviour.

In January 2025, the case was heard in court, only the second time in the six years since the petition was filed. During the hearing, the Supreme Court pulled up the UGC for not having filed its responses in the case.

The following month, the UGC released a draft of a set of regulations titled “Promotion of Equity in Higher Education Institutions Regulations, 2025”. The regulations noted that they were intended to replace the 2012 regulations.

This was a puzzling step. The petitioners had not sought the issuing of new regulations – rather, they had sought the enforcement of the 2012 regulations, even as they pointed out lacunae in them. Neither had the court directed the UGC to formulate new regulations.

Educationists were particularly perturbed because while the...

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