Draft revised rules prepared by the University Grants Commission (UGC) to help institutions check cases of discrimination have dropped details on forms of bias and have provided a penalty for false complaints, as certain activists termed it an attempt to perpetuate inequality.

The higher education regulator has sought feedback from the stakeholders till March 28 on its UGC (Promotion of Equity in Higher Education Institutions) Regulations 2025, which will replace similar regulations framed in 2012.

The 2012 regulations clearly defined the forms of discrimination such as announcing names of castes, religion, tribe or region of a student or labelling a student as reserved category person or passing remarks indicating caste, or religion of a student for his under-performance or allotting differential time to students to meet faculty or treating some students separately for use of facilities.

The draft revised regulations have given a broad definition of discrimination without details. According to the proposed rules: “Discrimination means any unfair, differential, or biased treatment or any such act against any stakeholder on the grounds only of religion, race, caste, sex, place of birth, or any of them”. The existing regulations mention disability as a factor for discrimination, which has not been mentioned in the definition of discrimination.

The draft rules said every institution shall establish an Equal Opportunity Centre and have an equity committee having representations of women, Scheduled Caste (SC) and Scheduled Tribe (ST) faculty members. The institutions shall ensure that “all students at the time of taking admission or renewal of admission and all faculty members and staff furnish an undertaking to the effect that he/she shall promote equity and will not indulge himself/herself in any form of discrimination”.

An aggrieved person may report any incident of discrimination on an online portal or equity helpline to be created by the institute. The equity committee will decide on appropriate action and the institution shall take further action. “Anyone who makes a false complaint of discrimination shall be liable to a fine as may be determined by the equity committee,” said the draft rules.

Dheeraj Singh, an alumnus of IIT Kanpur and a diversity activist, described the proposed rules as an attempt to cover up cases of discrimination and feared they would be misused against the victims. He said the forms of discrimination have been dropped and the definition of discrimination has been kept very vague. He said the central law SC-ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act has listed 37 types of behaviour by the high castes people which would be considered offences.

“The 2012 regulations gave certain types of actions which constitute discrimination. That is important because without such details on forms, it will be left to the discretion of the institute to decide whether a complaint is genuine or false. It will be easy for them to dismiss complaints. This will help the institutions to cover up discrimination rather than protecting the weaker sections,” Singh said.