The Supreme Court has recently ruled that allocating only 10% of Army Dental Corps (ADC) slots to female candidates is a prima facie violation of Article 14 of the Indian Constitution.
A Bench of Justices BR Gavai and Aravind Kumar was hearing a challenge to a Delhi High Court judgement that had earlier vacated a “status quo” order on the ADC recruitment results due to gender discrimination claims made by candidates.
This comes after a number of petitioners filed cases in several High Courts opposing the Central Government’s decision to reserve 90% of ADC seats for men.
“As a result of such a stance, we have discovered an anomalous situation.” Whereas a male candidate who is 10 times less meritorious than a female candidate is allowed to participate in the selection process, a female candidate who is 10 times more meritorious than a male candidate is deprived from participating,” the decision added.
Though the Supreme Court ordered that the status quo be maintained, it also ordered that the interviews of the left-out candidates who had moved before the High Courts be conducted.
The Court further stated that male candidates with ranks up to 2,394 are eligible to participate in the selection process, while the cut-off rank for female candidates was 235.
Rejecting the Government of India’s argument that this was due to various exigencies unique to the defense services, the Court stated that the current selection process, in which only 10% of seats are reserved for female candidates, violated Article 14.
It took the prima facie view that depriving highly qualified female candidates from participating in the selection process “is putting the clock in reverse direction.”
“Leave aside giving preferential treatment to the female as envisaged under Article 15 of the Indian Constitution, the respondent-Union of India’s stand is violative of Article 14 of the Indian Constitution, inasmuch as it denies a meritorious female the opportunity to compete and allows a much less meritorious male to participate in the selection process,” the order continued.
The Central Government stated that it was willing to conduct interviews with the current petitioners whose NEET (MDS) – 2022 ranking is much lower than 235.
The Supreme Court has now ordered that the NEET (MDS) results be declared when the female petitioners’ interviews are completed and the results are presented before the Bench.
The matter is listed for further consideration on May 3, 2023.
