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| UGC equity framework legally unbalanced, lacks neutrality in grievance architecture: PK | | | Early Times Report
JAMMU, Jan 28: Panun Kashmir has raised serious constitutional and procedural objections to the recently notified University Grants Commission regulations on equity and inclusion, stating that the framework, as presently designed, fails the tests of neutrality, proportionality, and equal protection under law, and risks institutionalising imbalance within higher education governance.
In a joint statement, Kuldeep Raina, General Secretary Panun Kashmir, and Tito Ganju, Vice Chairman Panun Kashmir, said that while the objective of preventing discrimination is legitimate, the regulatory design itself introduces asymmetry that is constitutionally indefensible.
The organisation pointed out that the mandatory Equal Opportunity Centres and Equity Committees prescribed under the Regulations are structured without inclusive representation, as membership is restricted to specified categories, with no provision for participation from the General Category.
Kuldeep Raina stated that equality jurisprudence does not permit pre-classification of guilt or innocence based on group identity. "Any regulatory mechanism that implicitly assumes one group as the exclusive source of discrimination, while excluding it from oversight structures, offends the basic constitutional requirement of even-handedness," he said.
Vice Chairman Tito Ganju underscored that the Regulations confer wide investigative and recommendatory powers on internal committees without embedding countervailing procedural protections. "The absence of safeguards against motivated or unsubstantiated complaints places the framework in conflict with settled principles of natural justice, particularly the requirement of fairness, balance, and reasoned action," he observed.
Panun Kashmir further argued that affirmative frameworks must remain corrective rather than coercive. "Equity, in constitutional terms, is a remedial tool, not a perpetual regulatory presumption. When corrective measures evolve into structural bias, they lose both legal legitimacy and moral force," Ganju said.
The organisation also flagged the systemic implications of repeatedly weakening merit as an organising principle of higher education. It warned that regulatory regimes perceived as punitive or skewed inevitably push aspirational families and students away from domestic institutions, thereby undermining academic competitiveness and national capacity-building. |
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