The Delhi High Court has delivered a sharp rebuke to the Central government for leaving 20 flying posts in the Indian Air Force unfilled—despite qualified women being available to step in.
At the heart of the case was Archana, a candidate who cleared the National Defence Academy (NDA) exam but was denied a position because only two of the 92 flying seats had been formally “earmarked” for women. The remaining 90, according to the Union Public Service Commission notification, were supposedly open to all. Yet, when no male candidate qualified for 20 of those slots, the government chose to let them sit vacant rather than appoint women.
A Division Bench of Justices C Hari Shankar and Om Prakash Shukla was not impressed. They ruled that once a candidate—male or female—meets the required fitness and flying standards, they are entitled to compete for every unreserved seat. The court ordered Archana’s immediate appointment to one of the unfilled posts, making clear she must be treated on par with her peers in rank, seniority, and benefits.
The bench didn’t just stop at legal reasoning—it sent a message. “We are, mercifully, no longer in those times in which discrimination could be made between male and female candidates so far as entry into the Armed Forces is concerned,” the judges observed. Gender, they stressed, is nothing more than a chromosomal accident, and continuing to treat it as a barrier is “illogical as well as anachronistic.”
Archana had argued that being seventh in the women’s merit list should have entitled her to a position once the men’s side fell short. The Court agreed. It underlined that once the Armed Forces set eligibility conditions, those who meet them must be judged by merit alone—not by gender.
The ruling marks another push toward gender neutrality in military recruitment, a reminder that equal opportunity cannot remain a slogan on paper while qualified candidates are left grounded.
