The Delhi High Court on Tuesday said it will hear on January 11 a plea challenging the stay on the inclusion of married people in the ‘Judge Advocate General’ (JAG) legal wing of the Army.
Chief Justice D.N. Patel and Justice Jyoti Singh accepted petitioner Kush Kalra’s request for an early hearing of the petition and allowed the central government to file any additional affidavit. The bench said that the matter be listed for hearing on January 11, 2022. If the respondent (Centre) wants to file an affidavit, he can.
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The petitioner submitted that the authorities have issued fresh advertisements and sought applications from young law graduates for the post of JAG. The application, urging for early hearing, said that no purpose would be served by keeping the matter pending for a long time and due to the pendency of the said writ petition, many eligible young married law graduates on the basis of their marital status in the Indian Army. The judges are deprived of short service commission (joining) in the Advocate General branch, especially women.
In 2019, the Center had told the High Court that the right to marriage is not a fundamental right and does not come under the purview of the right to life under the Constitution. He had argued that there is no discrimination on the basis of marital status in the JAG department or any other branch of the Army.
The Center had said in an affidavit that the ban is on both men and women, as the pre-joining training is very stringent and there is no bar on them to marry or have children after joining the shakha. .
Till the year 2017, married women were not eligible for recruitment in the JAG department, but there was no such bar on men. But in 2016, Kalra challenged this policy over discrimination against women candidates. After this, the government changed it in August 2017 and banned both men and women.
Kalra then filed a fresh petition challenging the alleged ‘discrimination against married people. This petition was filed by lawyer Charu Wali Khanna in 2018.
