LiveUGC Regulations row Live Updates: Plea in Supreme Court challenging UGC regulations

"Let's all come together and ask for a complete roll-back of this exclusionary & presumptuous UGC guidelines, which instead of preventing discrimination, is going to cause more discrimination & division in campuses," a post on X mentioned. 

A plea has been filed in the Supreme Court challenging the UGC Higher Education Regulations. The plea was filed by Advocate Vineet Jindal

Following directions from the Supreme Court, the University Grants Commission (UGC) has set a new set of regulations - Promotion of Equity in Higher Education Institutions Regulations, 2026 to constitute a structured framework for grievance redressal and support disadvantaged groups across universities and colleges. The petition was filed by the mothers of Rohith Vemula and Payal Tadvi.   

UGC likely to form a high-level committee comprising education experts, officials, legal experts to review the matter pertaining to UGC's Higher Education regulations, as per sources.  

 As per the UGC's new rules, every higher education institution should establish an equal opportunity centre and will coordinate with Civil society groups, police and district administration, faculty members, staff, local media, district administration and police. The centre will coordinate with District and State Legal Services Authorities to facilitate legal aid. 

Criticising the UGC regulations, Kumar Vishwas wrote- "A major political and social row has erupted from Uttar Pradesh to Delhi over the University Grants Commission's revised rules aimed at addressing caste-based discrimination in higher education institutions. The new guidelines have triggered sharp resentment among upper-caste groups, with protests planned on a large scale. Amid this growing discontent, noted poet Kumar Vishwas has also come out openly against the UGC."  

Alokit Tripathi, a PhD student from Delhi University, said that the new rules will create complete chaos in colleges as the burden of proof will now be completely shifted on to the accused, and there were no safeguards for wrongly accused students.

"The new regulations are draconian in nature. The definition of victim is already predetermined. Victim can be anyone in the campus," he told PTI. 

The UGC's new regulations has created an uproar over social media, with anguish expressed over how the terminology - "Caste-based discrimination" is defined in the UGC regulation. "Caste-based discrimination means discrimination only on the basis of caste or tribe against the members of the scheduled castes, scheduled tribes, and other backward classes," as mentioned on the UGC regulations. #ShameonUGC is one of the top trends on micro blogging platform - X as netizens are criticising the UGC's new regulations as anti-general category laws

Following directions from the Supreme Court, the University Grants Commission (UGC) has set a new set of regulations - Promotion of Equity in Higher Education Institutions Regulations, 2026 to constitute a structured framework for grievance redressal and support disadvantaged groups across universities and colleges. The petition was filed by the mothers of Rohith Vemula and Payal Tadvi.  

The UGC's new regulations has created an uproar over social media, with anguish expressed over how the terminology - "Caste-based discrimination" is defined in the UGC regulations. 

Under UGC's new regulations, the centre will be responsible for  implementation of equity-related policies and programmes, to provide academic, financial guidance to disadvantaged groups and to coordinate with authorities and civil society. 

As per the UGC's new rules, every higher education institution should establish an equal opportunity centre and will coordinate with Civil society groups, police and district administration, faculty members, staff, local media, district administration and police. The centre will coordinate with District and State Legal Services Authorities to facilitate legal aid.