New Delhi: The Supreme Court has stayed the University Grants Commission (Promotion of Equity in Higher Education Institutions) Regulations, 2026, calling the rules which were brought to tackle caste discrimination in higher educational institutions as those which are “capable of misuse.”A bench led by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi was hearing three writ petitions which challenge the constitutionality of the 2026 regulations, by Mritunjay Tiwari, Vineet Jindal and Rahul Dewan.The new regulations will be kept in abeyance till March 19, the date by which the Union government and the University Grants Commission will have to respond to the Supreme Court’s notice. The court has ordered that the 2012 Regulations will operate in the meantime, LiveLaw has reported.The regulations have led to protests among ‘upper’ caste groups.The CJI appeared to suggest that the rules be revised. “Some committee should be there with eminent jurists…have 2-3 persons…who understand social values and ailments society is facing. How entire society should grow…how people are going to behave outside campus if we create this…they must apply their mind,” the CJI said.Arguing for the petitioners, advocate Vishnu Shankar Jain said that discrimination against ‘general’ category persons has not been included in the regulations.“When S.3(e) is already in place, what’s the need for 3c? It has no reasonable nexus with objective…it presumes that only a particular section faces caste-based discrimination,” Jain submitted. In India, particular sections indeed face caste-based discrimination.As per Regulation 3(c) of the UGC (Promotion of Equity in Higher Education Institutions) Regulations, 2026, “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”.“Prima facie language of the regulations…there is complete vagueness…capable of misuse…some expert may advise remodulation,” CJI Kant said of the regulations, in the hearing.“Whatever we have gained in terms of achieving a casteless society, are we now becoming regressive?” he also asked Solicitor General Tushar Mehta.The CJI also questioned why separate hostels for different caste groups were purportedly proposed in the regulation. “For god’s sake, don’t do this! We all used to stay together…There are inter caste marriages also,” CJI Kant said.The new rules have come after a petition was filed in 2019 by Abeda Salim Tadvi and Radhika Vemula, the mothers of Payal Tadvi and Rohith Vemula, respectively, who questioned the implementation of the earlier equity rules. The two scholars had died by suicide after repeated caste-based discrimination.As highlighted by legal scholar Gautam Bhatia, one of the petitioners has submitted that the regulation suffers “from a constitutional infirmity akin to the presumption underlying the colonial-era Criminal Tribes Act, 1871, which designated certain communities as inherently criminal and was later repealed as violative of equality and constitutional morality” – appearing to compare the ‘upper’ caste groups with criminalised and denotified tribes.