The Delhi High Court on Wednesday asked the central government to clarify its position on a petition challenging the recruitment process for Territorial Army officers, which allegedly limits female intake to a single seat while earmarking between 12 and 18 vacancies for male candidates.
A division bench comprising Chief Justice Devendra Kumar Upadhyaya and Justice Tejas Karia issued a notice to the Centre, directing authorities to submit a formal response to the plea filed by petitioner Kush Kalra.
Allegations Of Disproportionate Allocation
According to the petition, recruiting authorities have consistently maintained an uneven seat distribution across successive recruitment cycles from 2022 through 2026. The plea highlighted that during this four-year span, male candidates were allocated between 12 and 18 positions in each cycle, while female aspirants were restricted to just one vacancy.
The petitioner contended that such an unequal distribution amounts to tokenism and directly infringes upon constitutional guarantees. The plea urged the bench to declare the prevailing recruitment policy invalid, asserting that confining women to a solitary post while reserving a substantially higher number of vacancies for men is discriminatory.
Conflict With Landmark 2018 Precedent
The petition further argued that the current intake pattern undermines the High Court’s landmark 2018 verdict, which struck down the previous male-only recruitment framework as unconstitutional and formally permitted women to join the Territorial Army. In that judgment, the court held that the phrase “any person” appearing in Section 6 of the Territorial Army Act, 1948 applies equally to male and female citizens.
Submitting that granting entry without fair representation was merely a partial measure, the petitioner stated that restricting vacancies to a single seat perpetuates the very constitutional violation the court had previously sought to eliminate. The plea requested the court’s intervention to ensure the full and effective implementation of the 2018 ruling.
