The Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected the Centre's pleato defer the first National Defence Academy (NDA) exam for women candidates,and directed that women should be allowed to sit for the upcoming exam onNovember 14.
A bench headed by Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul said:"This won't send the right signal to women after having given them theaspiration. Let's begin from this year."
"We cannot delay things by a year. We gave hope tothe girls. We cannot deny them that hope now," said the bench
The top court pushed the Armed Forces to allow women towrite the NDA exam in November this year, and not wait till May 2022.
The bench noted that postponing the process of allowingwomen to write the NDA exam to May will delay their induction to 2023.
The Centre contended that certain infrastructural andcurriculum changes are required to allow the induction of women, and soughttime till May 2022 to allow the women to take the exam. The bench said theArmed Forces are trained to act in emergencies and it is the best responseteam.
The bench reiterated that the admission of women cannotbe postponed, while taking note of the submissions made by senior advocateChinmoy Pradip Sharma, representing the petitioner Kush Kalra, that two examsare held by the NDA during a year for the admissions to the next year.
The Centre has told the Supreme Court that a study grouphas been constituted by the defence services to expeditiously formulate acomprehensive curriculum for women cadets.
The government said, a notification allowing womencandidates to take the entrance exam for entry into all three defence servicesin the existing streams through the National Defence Academy (NDA) will bereleased in May, 2022.
In an affidavit, the Centre said: "A study group hasbeen constituted by the defence services, comprising of experts toexpeditiously formulate the comprehensive curriculum for women cadets at NDAand a Board of Officers has been convened to give a holistic and futuristicproposal for training of women cadets at NDA incorporating all relevantaspects".