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Equality in the opportunity to access higher education in a developing country like India is imperative. While six different types of disparities can be observed in access to higher education in India, disparity along the social categorization in the form of people belonging to Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, need to be categorically addressed. For a focused and an effective policy initiative, it is first important to identify the extent of disparity and hence Social category-wise Parity Index (SPI) has been proposed and calculated along the lines of Gender Parity Index (GPI). It was observed that as compared to all categories, SPI was lowest for the ST population followed by SC population. Further, in both groups, females were at a greater disadvantage than males. Inter-state disparities in SPI can also be observed with selected states performing much better than the others. SPI can thus help in identifying the most impoverished groups of people and focus the policy initiatives for more effective outcome in terms of increased access to higher education.