TMI Blog1979 (9) TMI 211X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... of Miss Muthamma that sex prejudice against Indian womanhood pervades the service rules even a third of a century after Freedom. There is some basis for the charge of bias in the rules and this makes the ominous indifference of the executive to bring about the banishment of discrimination in the heritage of service rules. If high officials lose hopes of equal justice under the rules, the legal lot of the little Indian, already priced out of the expensive judicial market, is best left to guess. This disturbing thought induces us to make a few observations about the two impugned rules which appear prima facie, discriminatory against the female of the species in public service and have surprisingly survived so long, presumably, because servant ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... as having stated-it will not be irrelevant here to mention that most of the women who are in the service at senior levels are being very systematically selected for posts which have traditionally been assigned a very low priority by the Ministry. 3. If a fragment of these assertions were true, unconstitutionality is writ large in the administrative psyche and masculine hubris which is the anathema for part III haunts the echelons in the concerned Ministry. If there be such gender injustice in action, it deserves scrupulous attention from the summit so as to obliterate such tendency. 4. What is more manifest as misogynist in the Foreign Service is the persistence of two rules which have been extracted in the petition. Rule 8(2) of the ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... arried woman, other things being equal, stands on no worse footing. This misogynous posture is a hangover of the masculine culture of manacling the weaker sex forgetting how our struggle for national freedom was also a battle against woman's thraldom. Freedom is indivisible, so is Justice. That our founding faith enshrined in Articles 14 and 16 should have been tragically ignored vis-a-vis half of India's humanity, viz., our women, is a sad reflection on the distance between Constitution in the book and Law in Action. And if the Executive as the surrogate of Parliament, makes rules in the teeth of Part III, especially when high political office, even diplomatic assignment has been filled by women, the inference of die-hard allergy t ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... second, some officers junior to her have gone above her. In the rat race of Indian official life, seniority appears to be acquiring a religious reverence. Since the career ahead of the petitioner may well be affected by the factum of prior birth into Grade I of the Service, her grievance turning on seniority cannot be brushed aside. Her case, with particular focus on seniority, deserves review vis-a-vis those junior to her who have been promoted in the interval of some months. The sense of injustice rankles and should be obliterated so that every servant in strategic position gives of his or her best to the country. We have had the advantage of the presence of the learned Solicitor-General, appearing for the Union of India. With characteris ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X
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