Supreme Court Rejects Allowing Women In NDA Exams In 2022, Here's Why

NDA Exams and women: The Supreme Court rejected the Central government's plea to allow women to sit for the National Defence Academy (NDA) exams from next year as it didn't want women to be denied their right. The court has directed that the women will be able to give the exam in November this year.

Justice S K Kaul observed that it will be difficult to accept Centre's plea to considering the "aspirations of the candidates willing to take the exam". Justice B R Gavai of the Bench said, "Armed Forces have seen far emergent situations both at the border and in the country” and the court is “sure such training will come handy here."

The apex court had allowed women on August 18 to sit for the NDA exams this year. When the Centre asked the court to delay the order for 2022, the court said, "What answer would we have for the students who are on the anvil of taking the exam? Don’t ask us to effectively vacate the order. You go on with the exercise. Let us see the result and see how many get it."

"We will thus not vacate the order passed by us. After we have given them hope, we don’t want to deny them."

The plea filed by Advocate Kush Kalra will be kept pending so that directions can be sought as situations arise. Kalra had asked the court’s intervention to allow women candidates to appear for the NDA exams. The Centre earlier termed the decision a matter of policy but the court refused and said that the policy is based on "gender discrimination". After this, the Centre had agree to allow women for NDA but they asked for time till May 2022 for necessary arrangements.

The Defence Ministry pointed out the the need to formulate medical standards for the women candidates. It said, “while the education curriculum is well set, all the rest of aspects of the training are required to be formulated separately”. The Ministry also added about the need to upgrade infrastructure depending on the intake strength of the women candidates on the operational, budgetary and administrative criteria.

Additional Solicitor General Aishwarya Bhati urged the court to grant exemption this year. But the court said “it has to be from this session only…”. She informed the court that a ministry had set up a Study Group of experts to effect the necessary changes.

The court also pointed out that it had passed interim orders and added that armed forces are best suited to deal with emergencies and that the court doesn’t think they will not be capable of accommodating the students who take the exam this year.