High Court Refuses To Entertain PIL Alleging Gender Discrimination By Delhi Govt In Promotion Of Vice Principals In Govt Schools

The Delhi High Court on Friday refused to entertain a public interest litigation alleging gender discrimination by the Delhi Government in promotion of Vice Principals to the post of Principals in government-aided schools.

A division bench of Chief Justice Satish Chandra Sharma and Justice Subramonium Prasad said that in case any female Vice Principal is ignored of promotion on the basis of gender bias, such an individual is certainly at the liberty to file appropriate legal proceedings.

After making some submissions, the plea was withdrawn from court.

The plea was moved by Advocate Ehraz Zafar based on a newspaper article dated November 7, 2022 stating that the Delhi Government had invited eligible Vice Principals for the appointment of Principals under separate lists for males and females.

This, according to the petitioner lawyer, was not only discriminatory and arbitrary but also in violation of the fundamental rights of female Vice Principals.

“The division of the vacancies as per male and female has been in done with a malafide intent to grant promotion to all the male Vice Principals in the list of the notification dated 04.11.2022 while female Vice Principals despite being senior to many of the male colleagues will not get the promotion from the post of Vice Principal to Principal,” the plea stated.

The PIL thus sought directions to prohibit the Delhi Government from dividing the posts of Vice Principals and Principals on the basis of gender and also to formulate guidelines or rules for such a promotion.

The plea also stated that the manner in which the Delhi Government divided the number of posts available for promotion into male and females was arbitrary and thus the criteria laid down therein was without any justification

“The whole promotion process under the garb of gender criteria is a tailor-made to suit a particular gender I entity which per se must be declared bad in law and the same amounts to violate the fundamental rights i.e. Right to Equity, Right to equal Opportunity of Employment, which ultimately results into loss of livelihood,” the plea added.

Title: EHRAZ ZAFAR v. GOVERNMENT OF NCT OF DELHI & ORS.

Citation: 2023 LiveLaw (Del) 35