It's rare that any single, isolated statement or action will rise to the level of illegal discrimination. Usually there's a pattern of behavior, and that pattern would provide context to prove any alleged implications in bringing up the affirmative action programs. You'd have to read the actual complaint. The journalist is only giving highlights that they feel are newsworthy, which may not strongly correlate to legal significance. However, mentioning the discussion of color is probably exceedingly important. The Federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 made discrimination based on color explicitly illegal. Without that hook it might be more difficult to argue that Federal civil rights legislation applies to discrimination based on caste.

Yes, it is discrimination as the premise is that "merit" is inborn and fixed. So the fact that someone came in through affirmative action is trotted out as incontrovertible evidence that they are of inferior birth aka an inferior caste.

I suspect so. Affirmative action laws would be meaningless, otherwise.

I couldn't read the article because of the paywall.

I'm going to assume the person in question graduated from IIT as well as gained entry. If so, I don't see how it matters if he got in through a door with a lower bar, if he graduated, he graduated. Unless graduating from IIT is a rubber stamp for showing up?

Also, just because the bar is lower for admissions doesn't mean that people who cleared the bar couldn't have cleared the bar otherwise. I don't see how IIT entrance exam scores are relevant for employment at Cisco anyway.

It depends on what theory you believe about why a university degree is valuable. If you see it as a competitive signal of how many people a candidate was better than, then the signal is contaminated.

One might feel the same about an African American graduate of MIT, but it'd be illegal to discriminate based on it.

Ivy League degrees are worthless to most employers except for what they say about how you score (or who your parents are) and this signal is unavailable to those who benefit from lowered admission standards. Does anyone actually think that you learn anything of substance better at the University of Pennsylvania than at the University of Iowa?

Haha, Spot on!