‘UGC Had Laid A Minefield For Gen Category Students Where Any Word Was Potential Lawsuit’
Nikhil Shulka, a postgraduate student from Lucknow University, says the stay on the UGC Rules by Supreme Court rekindles hope on the campus in these polarized times. His views:
The Supreme Court stay on the discriminatory UGC rules 2026 reaffirms a simple, powerful truth: Equality cannot be achieved by institutionalizing inequality. We welcome it because it protects the innocent from malicious prosecution. We welcome it because it gives the country a chance to craft a policy that truly unites us as students of India, rather than dividing us into caste conflicts. The SC has suspended a regressive set of rules and it is now up to the policymakers to chart a progressive, inclusive path forward.
The apex court has tried to preserve of the university as a space of learning. General Category students want to study, compete, and succeed based on merit. They do not want to spend their college years navigating a minefield of identity politics where every word is a potential lawsuit. The SC’s stay is seen as a defence of the academic environment itself—preventing it from becoming a courtroom of historical grievances.
The stay of the SC is also an opportunity to redraft the laws. The demand is simple – make the laws caste-neutral. Discrimination is wrong, regardless of who does it to whom. A Brahmin bullying a Dalit is wrong. A group of Dalits bullying a Brahmin is also wrong. The law must penalize the act of bullying/discrimination, not the identity of the actors. We expect the UGC to come back in March with a “re-modulated” draft that removes Clause 3(c) or expands it to include all students.
This episode has been a political awakening for the General Category youth. The silence of the political class has taught them that they cannot rely on traditional party loyalties. The swift legal victory has shown the power of judicial activism and community organization.
The General Category student body is now more vigilant. Any future attempt to sneak in exclusionary clauses will be met with immediate legal challenges. The trust in the system is shaken, but the trust in the Constitution (and the Supreme Court as its guardian) is strengthened.
General Category students have felt that their concerns about reverse discrimination were dismissed by the intelligentsia as privileged whining. The SC’s observation that the rules could divide society and were vague is a judicial acknowledgment that these fears were grounded in reality. The Court effectively said that you cannot protect one group by stripping rights from another.
This principle—that equity does not mean retribution—is the cornerstone of the General Category’s position. With the stay, the ‘guilty until proven innocent’ mechanism is paused. The immediate threat of summary suspension without due process is gone. General Category students feel that their right to a fair hearing—a right afforded even to terrorists like Kasab—has been preserved. They are no longer ‘worse than Kasab’ in the eyes of the law, at least for now.
The Pre-Judgment phase was a dark period characterized by the fear of misuse, and the Post-Judgment phase brings relief, not because the struggle against discrimination has ended, but because the highest court has affirmed that this struggle must be inclusive, fair, and constitutional.
As told to Rajat Rai
