The Myth Of Misuse: Examining The 'False Cases' Narrative in UGC Debate

The chant came first, the evidence later. As university campuses across the country erupted against the University Grants Commission’s new equity and anti-discrimination Regulations, one warning rang out the loudest: this will be misused. The claim, voiced by protesting teachers’ groups and student collectives, was familiar, forceful and ominous. The new guidelines, they argued, would weaponise anti-caste law, expose the faculty to frivolous complaints, and unleash a wave of false cases under the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.

The University Grants Commission (UGC) notified the Promotion of Equity in Higher Education Institutions Regulations, 2026 on January 13, replacing the 2012 guidelines and moving from an advisory framework to a mandatory, penal regime. However, on January 29, the Supreme Court stayed their implementation, flagging concerns that the Regulations were vague and open to misuse. The 2012 Regulations will remain in force until further orders.

When this fear is tested against facts, court records, police investigations and a decade of university-linked cases, the argument begins to fray.

An examination of reported cases over the past ten years shows something striking: there is no pattern of rampant misuse of the SC/ST Act within universities or higher education institutions. What exists instead is a handful of isolated disputes, most quashed by courts at a preliminary stage, often rooted in employment conflicts rather than student complaints, and repeatedly flagged by judges as legally untenable or procedurally flawed.

Between 2016-26, fewer than half-a-dozen cases from universities were publicly cited as examples of “false” or “motivated” use of the SC/ST Act. In nearly all of them, the courts stepped in early, not to validate misuse claims but to clarify legal thresholds.

At the University of Allahabad, an assistant professor filed an SC/ST Act complaint in 2016 against senior colleagues. Nine years later, the Allahabad High Court quashed the FIR, calling it frivolous and imposing a Rs 15 lakh fine on the complainant.

“This is a case where there is pure abuse of process of law where the complainant just to wreak personal vengeance against the Head of the Department tried to implicate him and his colleagues by filing false and frivolous cases,” the court observed after hearing both sides.

The case is often cited as proof of misuse. What is less mentioned is how exceptional the outcome was and how rarely such penalties are imposed.

At Jain University, Bengaluru, students and faculty were booked in 2023 over a satirical skit. The Karnataka High Court quashed the FIR, with Justice S.R. Krishna Kumar holding that the performance was protected speech under Article 19 and that invoking the SC/ST Act amounted to an abuse of process. In Delhi University, a sacked ad-hoc assistant professor sought an FIR under the Act against her college principal and faculty members in 2021, alleging caste-based humiliation and conspiracy. Delhi Police, in its Action Taken Report, told the court no offence was made out: the alleged remarks were not made in public view, and no specific acts were attributed to anyone except the principal. A sessions court dismissed the plea, calling it a case of “personal vendetta”.

In 2026, a viral social media claim alleged that a Dalit student at Sri Ram College of Commerce (SRCC) had filed an SC/ST Act case over a rejected marriage proposal. The college publicly denied that any such complaint was filed. No FIR exists. The incident remains a rumour, yet it spread faster than verified court orders ever do.

In Bengaluru North University, a guest lecturer’s 2025 complaint against the former Vice-Chancellor Professor Niranjana Vanalli combined allegations under the SC/ST Act and defamation provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita. In February 2026, the Karnataka High Court quashed the FIR, citing procedural lapses and the absence of a prima facie atrocity. The court made it clear: employment disputes cannot be casually converted into caste atrocity cases. Most of the dispute stemmed from employment and procedural fairness concerns, not caste atrocity elements, the court noted. Importantly, it stopped short of branding the complaint “false”.

What links these cases is not a flood of malicious complaints, but judicial restraint. The courts repeatedly emphasised that for the SC/ST Act to apply, specific legal conditions must be met, public view, intentional insult on caste grounds, and clear attribution. Where these thresholds were not crossed, FIRs were quashed. Crucially, none of the documented cases involved students weaponising the law against professors or any other students in the way protest rhetoric suggests. Most were faculty-versus-administration disputes or employment fallouts. Even fewer resulted in arrests, prolonged trials, or convictions.

That absence matters. Because if misuse were endemic in universities, it would leave behind a trail: criminal trials, departmental suspensions upheld by courts, or findings of mala fide intent. That trail simply does not exist. The misuse argument leans heavily on statistics, especially low conviction rates under the SC/ST Act. But legal experts warn this is a category error.

Supreme Court advocate Disha Wadekar, who represents petitioners seeking institutional safeguards against caste discrimination in higher education, says acquittals are routinely misread. “Conviction depends on many factors—quality of investigation, hostile witnesses, prosecutorial lapses,” she says. “An acquittal is not proof that a law was misused. To establish misuse, you need a separate finding of mala fide intent.”

She points out that this misunderstanding drove the Supreme Court’s controversial 2018 Subhash Kashinath Mahajan judgement, which introduced safeguards like preliminary inquiries and anticipatory bail in the SC/ST act to prevent misuse. Dalit and tribal groups protested nationwide, calling it a dilution of protection. Parliament swiftly reversed the ruling through the 2018 amendment, restoring the Act’s original teeth. In 2019-20, the Supreme Court itself reviewed and recalled its earlier directions.

“The court effectively admitted that equating acquittals with misuse was flawed,” Wadekar says.

Even official data does not support the alarmist framing. The National Crime Records Bureau does not quantify “misuse” at all. The Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment has acknowledged that states report misuse, but without providing national figures or university-specific data.

“Misuse has been reported by States who act as per relevant legal provisions,” read the response dated December 2, 2025, provided by Union Minister of State For Social Justice and Empowerment, Ramdas Athawale, in a written reply to a question in Lok Sabha about the ‘Existence of Untouchability’.

As of 2023, over three lakh SC/ST Act cases were pending in courts. But none of the NCRB’s tables isolate higher education institutions as a misuse hotspot. There is no dataset, governmental or judicial, that shows universities as a site of systematic false complaints. However, a 2019 survey by Common Cause and Lokniti-CSDS found that one in five police personnel believed SC/ST Act cases were false or motivated—a perception disproportionately held by upper-caste officers. Belief is obviously not evidence. The same report warned that inadequate caste sensitisation within the police force could itself distort how complaints are handled.

The 2026 UGC Regulations that protesters fear do not bypass the procedure. Complaints go to an internal Equity Committee bound by principles of natural justice—notice, hearing and reasoned orders. This primary investigative body on campus will be responsible for addressing discrimination complaints with high speed and accountability and will inquire into allegations of discrimination based on religion, race, caste, gender, place of birth, or disability.

According to Wadekar, decisions can be appealed before an ombudsman. Committees can dismiss complaints at the threshold if no prima facie case exists.  “This is not a system where you file a complaint and punishment automatically follows,” she says. “We’ve seen this framework before, in the Internal Complaints Committee (ICC) under the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013 (POSH Act). It hasn’t led to a breakdown of due process.”

The draft UGC rules initially proposed a vague clause on “false complaints”. After objections, it was dropped from the final regulations, a move rights groups welcomed, warning that such clauses often deter genuine complainants rather than punish proven misuse. The anxiety around misuse, critics argue, says more about power than process. In higher education, students and faculty from SC, ST and OBC communities remain numerically and institutionally marginal, especially in senior faculty and administrative roles, a point noted by Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd, Director, Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy, Maulana Azad National Urdu University in Hyderabad. In such asymmetrical spaces, the law, Wadekar argues, cannot pretend neutrality. “If society is unequal, laws cannot be symmetrical,” she says. “Otherwise, they become paper laws.”

Every protective statute, from domestic violence legislation to sexual harassment laws, has faced the same charge at birth: these will be misused. None were abandoned because of it. The evidence from universities over the past decade suggests that while misuse is theoretically possible, it is neither widespread nor unchecked. Courts intervene, procedures apply, and false claims, where they exist, collapse early.

The protest slogan survives. The proof, so far, does not.

Mrinalini Dhyani is a senior correspondent at Outlook. She covers governance, health, gender and conflict, with a strong emphasis on lived realities behind policy debates