‘No room for bias’: Delhi high court tells Centre to enrol woman in IAF | Latest News India

Discrimination based on gender has no place in today’s society, especially within the Armed Forces, the Delhi High Court has held, while directing the central government to appoint a woman candidate to the post of pilot in the Air Force.

The bench, however, rejected the contention as untenable, saying that the notification did not categorically mention that the 90 positions were only reserved for male candidates, and it was open for the UPSC to incorporate the same in its advertisements. (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

A bench of justices C Hari Shankar and Om Prakash Shukla delivered the verdict last week, while hearing a petition filed by a woman candidate, who sought directions to the Centre for her appointment to one of the unfilled posts.

“The distinction between male and female has, in the present time, been reduced to nothing more than a chance chromosomal circumstance, and ascribing to it any greater relevance would be illogical as well as anachronistic,” the bench said last Monday.

The petitioner had appeared following the National Defence Academy and Naval Academy Examination conducted in 2023 by the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC), in which she had secured the seventh rank among woman candidates. According to an official notification date May 17, 2023, a total of 92 vacancies were advertised for flying posts, out of which two were earmarked for women.

After the results were declared, both seats reserved for women were filled, while 70 of the 90 vacancies were occupied, leaving 20 seats vacant. In light of this, the woman approached the high court, seeking consideration for one of the 20 unallocated seats, despite them not being earmarked for woman candidates.

In her petition, the woman had also contended that the 90 seats were not said to be exclusively reserved for men and could be filled by men as well as women.

The Centre’s counsel, however, submitted that the 90 seats were reserved only for male candidates. The counsel further submitted that the 20 vacancies would not go unfulfilled, as the recruitment process is not limited to the NDA entry route but also includes selections through the Air Force Common Admission Test (AFCAT) and the Combined Defence Services Examination. Allowing appointment of more women through NDA could reduce the opportunities available to women candidates under the AFCAT quota, it said.

The bench, however, rejected the contention as untenable, saying that the notification did not categorically mention that the 90 positions were only reserved for male candidates, and it was open for the UPSC to incorporate the same in its advertisements.

“The 90 vacancies notified by the Notification dated 17 May 2023 issued by the UPSC, apart from the 2 vacancies earmarked for female candidates, cannot be regarded as earmarked for male candidates. They were vacancies which were open to female as well as male candidates,” the court said.

On the contention that 20 vacancies kept for other woman candidates, the court said the Centre was required to fill up the said vacancies from the “female candidates who were lower in merit to the two candidates who had been selected against the two earmarked vacancies.”

The court subsequently directed the Centre to appoint the petitioner against one of the 20 flying vacancies. She would be entitled to be treated at par, for all service benefits, with the 70 male and two female candidates who have been selected and appointed, it directed.

“We are, mercifully, no longer in those times in which discrimination could be made between male and female candidates so far as entry into the Armed Forces – or, for that matter, anywhere else – is concerned,” the court said in its 12-page verdict released on a later date.

It added, “It is time to adopt a somewhat pedestrian adage, that one wakes up and smells the coffee.”

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