Overview
- Delivering its September 16 order, a division bench of Justices C. Hari Shankar and Om Prakash Shukla directed consideration of five women SSC (Non-Tech) candidates against 62 vacancies left unfilled from the men’s quota in the 2021 CDS (II) intake.
- The batch notification allotted 169 posts for men and 16 for women, with 107 male posts filled and all 16 female seats exhausted, leaving 62 male vacancies open despite qualified women in the merit list.
- The court said Section 12 notifications allow women’s entry into specified corps and services without numeric limits, finding caps violative of Articles 14, 15 and 16 and rejecting estoppel arguments based on candidates’ prior participation.
- Relief is confined to corps identified in paragraph 45 of Arshnoor Kaur, with appointments subject to suitability, completion of pre-training requirements such as medical clearance, and the prescribed age limit as on the result date.
- In parallel Supreme Court hearings, a bench of Justices Surya Kant, Ujjal Bhuyan and N Kotiswar Singh questioned dual evaluation criteria and ‘frozen’ ACRs for SSC women seeking permanent commission, with arguments from women officers concluded and the Centre to respond on September 24.