Women applicants for Army Dental Corps get SC relief as more get selected

Vijay Mohan

Chandigarh, May 10

On directions of the Supreme Court, and earlier the Punjab and Haryana High Court, the Army has finally selected women applicants for the Army Dental Corps (ADC) who were left out due to a provision that had reserved 90 per cent vacancies for male candidates.

The Supreme Court (SC) has also recorded the statement of the Central Government that the selections shall be gender-neutral hereafter.

Women candidates who had a higher merit score than male candidates were left out of the selection process because of the reservation policy. Some of them had moved court against the policy.

The apex court was informed that all applicants who had filed petitions in courts had been provisionally interviewed as per judicial orders and a total of six women have been selected based on their merit as against the three vacancies that had been originally advertised for women.

Taking note of various submissions made before the court by the Additional Solicitor General in regard to the selection process, the SC Bench comprising Justice BR Gavai, Justice Vikram Nath and Justice Karol ruled on May 8 that the grievance of the petitioners stands satisfied.

Taking up a petition filed by Dr Gopika Nair, the SC’s Bench comprising Justice BR Gavai and Justice Aravind Kumar, had earlier observed that prima facie the reservation of 27 vacancies for men out of a total of 30, thereby allowing males up to the rank of 2,394 to participate in the appointment process and females only up to rank of 235, was discriminatory.

The SC had also observed that women candidates who were 10 times more meritorious were being ignored for recruitment, and depriving women from competing with men equally was not only against Article 15 of the Constitution, but also amounted to “putting the clock in reverse direction.”

The first case on the issue was heard by a bench of the Punjab and Haryana High Court comprising Justice GS Sandhawalia and Justice Jagmohan Bansal that had taken cognizance of gender discrimination in the ADC on a writ petition filed by Dr Satbir Kaur.

The High Court had then directed that the petitioner should be interviewed provisionally and the results of the ADC recruitment shall remain subject to the outcome of the petition.