Opinion Of Doctors Of Armed Forces To Prevail On Question Of Physical Fitness Of Candidates: Delhi High Court

A vacation bench of Justices Rajiv Sahai Endlaw and Asha Menon hearing the plea said that, as the standard of physical fitness for the forces is more stringent than for civilian employment, "Once no mala fides are attributed and the doctors of the Forces who are well aware of the demands of duties of the Forces in the terrain in which the recruited personnel are required to work, have formed an opinion that a candidate is not medically fit for recruitment, opinion of private or other government doctors to the contrary cannot be accepted inasmuch as the recruited personnel are required to work for the Forces and not for the private doctors or the government hospitals and which medical professionals are unaware of the demands of the duties in the Forces."

The court was hearing a plea by an aspirant to the post of Constable (G.D.) in the Central Armed Police Forces (CAPFs) who had applied for the said post pursuant to an advertisement dated 21st July, 2018, published in Employment News/Rozgar Samachar. The petitioner had appeared for the written test on 14th February, 2019 and for the Physical Standard Test/Physical Efficiency Test (PST/PET) on 26th August, 2019 and was also successful in these tests.

On 20th January, 2020, she was called for a medical examination, however, she was declared medically unfit for "Carrying Angle > 20° Both Side", and was issued a medical unfitness certificate of the same date, i.e. 20th January, 2020.

She was granted a chance to file an appeal against this finding. Before filing the appeal, and was also required to obtain a medical certificate from a medical practitioner/specialist medical officer of a government district hospital.

Pursuant to this, the petitioner approached the specialist orthopaedic surgeon in the Bowring and Lady Curzon Hospital, Government of Karnataka, who, after conducting a thorough examination, declared her fit, observing that "there is a bit Cubitus Valgus carrying angle < 20° (18°)".

Thereafter, on 26th October, 2020, the petitioner appeared before the Review Medical Board which again declared her unfit for the same reason. Questioning this conclusion she submitted an application dated 30th October, 2020 to the competent authority in Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), contending that there was no specialist in the Review Medical Board and that she had been wrongly declared unfit.

She also placed reliance on her medical examination reports from two other hospitals to establish her physical fitness. In her plea, she also went on to question the constitution of the Review Board, which had declared her unfit, citing "Uniform Guidelines for Medical Examination Test of Combined Recruitment of CT/GD in CAPFs/ARs", according to which one subject specialist had to be included on the Board. The court rejected this contention of the petitioner stating that she had failed to clarify her source of such information in the first place.

CRPF, on the other hand, submitted merely that it had no role to play in the conduct of the medical examination and had been made an unnecessary party.

Rejecting the stand of the petitioner, the court relied on the decisions in the cases of Priti Yadav Vs. Union of India 2020 SCC OnLine Del 951; Jonu Tiwari Vs. Union of India 2020 SCC OnLine Del 855; Nishant Kumar Vs. Union of India 2020 SCC OnLine Del 808 and Sharvan Kumar Rai Vs. Union of India 2020 SCC Online Del 924, and said that "What may seem as a minor difference in the assessment of the Civil doctors in comparison to the assessment of the Medical Boards, may blow up into a serious health condition during the course of service with the CAPFs. It is not in the interest of either the Police Forces or candidates that their medical problems are brushed aside only on the plea that it was a question of employment."

The court also said that the petitioner had already exhausted all her remedies of getting a second medical opinion during the Appeal and before the Review Board and there was no purpose in getting another medical examination conducted, and therefore her plea was liable to be rejected.