Many upper-caste protestors opposing the University Grants Commission’s new guidelines against discrimination have demanded that the rules be made caste-neutral.
But lawyer Disha Wadekar said there is no point to the regulations if they are made caste-neutral. “Then they will have to be gender neutral, they will have to be disabilities neutral, so everyone can file complaints against everyone,” Wadekar told Scroll in an interview on Friday.
Wadekar is representing petitioners seeking institutional safeguards against caste-based discrimination in higher education institutions in India.
She pointed out that the UGC’s Redressal of Grievances of Students Regulations, 2023, which has also been mentioned in the 2026 guidelines, allow any student to file a complaint of victimisation. “So what is this uproar that ‘we don’t have a redressal’?”
Regarding claims that the new rules could be misused, Wadekar said that misuse is a symptom of systemic failures in our criminal justice system.
“This whole ‘misuse’ narrative about the atrocities act was also based on the fact that there are so many acquittals,” she said, pointing that similarly, in rape cases, only 25% cases reach conviction. “Does that mean that 75% of rape cases are false and are a misuse of the rape law?”
Excerpts from the interview:
How do you respond to what happened in the Supreme...
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