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A Public Interest Litigation has been filed before the Delhi High Court alleging that “disproportionately higher vacancies” are reserved for male candidates while restricting female candidates to a single vacancy in the Territorial Army officer recruitment.

A division bench comprising Chief Justice DK Upadhyaya and Justice Tejas Karia directed the Union Government to file its response to the plea filed by Kush Kalra.

The Petition has been filed by Advocates Obhirup Ghosh, Rangoli Seth and Rohit. The matter was argued by Advocate Mohit Paul.

The plea contends that the practice is unconstitutional and violates Articles 14, 15, 16 and 19(1)(g) of the Constitution of India, despite the an earlier judgment of 2018 allowing women to enter the Territorial Army.

The plea seeks directions to the Union Government and other authorities to conduct Territorial Army officer recruitment on a gender-neutral and merit-based basis.

Kalra has relied upon the Delhi High Court's judgment in Kush Kalra v. Union of India & Anr., decided on January 5, 2018, wherein the Court struck down the exclusion of women from the Territorial Army as unconstitutional.

In that case, the High Court held that the expression “any person” under Section 6 of the Territorial Army Act, 1948 includes both males and females.

The plea alleges that despite the 2018 judgment, the authorities have continued to maintain a substantial disparity in the number of vacancies offered to male and female candidates.

According to the petition, the Territorial Army recruitment notification for 2022 provided 12 vacancies for male candidates and only one vacancy for female candidates. In 2023, the corresponding figures were 18 vacancies for men and one for women.

The same pattern allegedly continued in 2025, when 18 vacancies were earmarked for male candidates and only one for female candidates, with separate merit lists for men and women.

For 2026, the notification again provided 11 vacancies for male candidates and one vacancy for female candidates, with separate orders of merit.

The plea states that the Supreme Court, in Arshnoor Kaur judgment reaffirmed the principle of gender equality in military recruitment and held that once women are permitted entry into a branch of the Armed Forces, discriminatory numerical restrictions cannot be imposed merely under the guise of policy or organisational requirements.

The plea states that the Supreme Court directed recruitment to be conducted on a genuine gender-neutral and merit-based basis through a common merit list irrespective of sex or gender.

The plea argues that limiting women to a single vacancy amounts to “tokenism” and effectively perpetuates the gender discrimination which was struck down by the High Court in 2018.

It further contends that the continued practice of maintaining separate and drastically unequal vacancy numbers not only violates the constitutional guarantees of equality and non-discrimination but also undermines the effective implementation of the 2018 judgment in Kush Kalra case.

The plea seeks appropriate directions to the authorities to ensure that Territorial Army officer recruitment is conducted in accordance with constitutional guarantees of equality and on the basis of a common, merit-based recruitment process without discriminatory numerical restrictions against women.

Title: Kush Kalra v. Union of India & Ors

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