Akansha Upadhyay
Date-16 November 2022 at 19:43 IST
Recently, the Center informed the Delhi High Court that entry of female candidates in certain branches of the Indian Navy University has been permitted at par with male candidates.
The submission was made in opposition to the petition that claimed the Indian Navy was practising institutional discrimination and depriving female candidates of the right to serve.
The submission was made in a plea seeking a direction to the Center through the Ministry of Defense to permit the entry of female candidates in the “Indian Navy University Entry Scheme”, executive branch general service (X) cadre, IT, and technical branch engineering and electrical branch at par with male candidates”.
During the course of the hearing before a division bench of Chief Justice Satish Chandra Sharma and Justice Subramonium Prasad on November 11. Additional Solicitor General Chetan Sharma, for the Centre, raised objections to the maintainability of the plea as it pertained to a service matter.
The ASG drew the court’s attention towards an advertisement inviting applications for “Short Service Commission Officers in Information Technology (Executive Branch) commencing from January, 2023” onwards issued by the Indian Navy.”
“The ASG further pointed out another advertisement inviting applications for “Short Service Commission Officers for various entries, including General Service (Executive) GS (X) commencing from June, 2023 onwards” and thereafter contended that the “Indian Navy is now recruiting female candidates as well in both the branches as mentioned in the relief clause by the petitioner.”
Justice Sharma argued that the plea did not challenge the constitutional validity of Section 9(2) of the Indian Navy Act, 1957 which empowers the Center to issue notifications for the entry of female candidates in the Indian Navy. After considering the ASG’s submissions, the HC disposed of the plea.
The plea claimed that the Indian Navy was practising institutional discrimination without any rationale, arbitrarily depriving female candidates of the right to serve in the aforementioned branches.
The plea argued that the said discrimination is violative of the right of equality (Article 14), the right not to be discriminated on the basis of sex (Article 15), equality of opportunity in matters of public employment (Article 16), fundamental right to practice any profession or occupation (Article 19 (1) (g)) and human rights of women.