The Supreme Court has rejected a petition seeking 50 percent reservation for female cadets in the National Defence Academy (NDA), stating that it may not be feasible for the Apex Court to pass such an order at this time.
The Bench of Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice Aravind Kumar said on Friday that NDA had remained an exclusively man’s world for long, but it has finally been opened to women.
Dismissing a petition filed by a former NDA aspirant claiming that she was not selected, even as some of the male candidates with lower marks got through, the Apex Court told the petitioner that her intention may be noble, but it cannot be done this way. Things have to happen slowly and within the existing framework, it added.
Terming it a policy issue, the top court of the country said that it cannot issue an order stating that there should be 50:50 candidates in the elite institution.
The Apex Court observed that it was already monitoring the matter in a different batch of petitions, where larger issues concerning the issue were under consideration. It said that all relevant issues were being looked into, in order to see how the best could be achieved for women candidates.