New Delhi, Aug. 12 -- The Supreme Court on Monday struck down the Indian Army's policy of reserving six out of nine Judge Advocate General (JAG) branch vacancies for men and only three for women, calling it "arbitrary", unconstitutional and contrary to the principle of gender neutrality. In an important ruling reinforcing gender equality in the armed forces, a two judge bench held that the Army and the Centre could not impose a ceiling on the number of women in the JAG cadre once they had been permitted entry under Section 12 of the Army Act, 1950. "No nation can be secure when half of its population (i.e., its women force) is held back," emphasised the bench, adding that the "true meaning" of gender neutrality is that all meritorious candidates, irrespective of gender, must be selected. The ruling came on petitions filed by two women candidates who had ranked fourth and fifth overall but were denied selection because of the gender-based allocation of seats in the 2023 JAG recruitment. The bench pointed out that in this case, one petitioner , Arshnoor Kaur, had secured 447 marks, higher than the 433 scored by a male candidate ranked third in the men's list, yet she was excluded. The court directed her induction in the next available training course, noting that her exclusion amounted to "indirect discrimination" in violation of Articles 14 (equality), 15 (no discrimination), and 16 (equality of opportunity) of the Constitution. While the other candidate, Astha Tyagi had secured 477 markes, no order was passed in her case since she joined the Indian Navy during the pendency of the matter. Rejecting the Army's reliance on "extent of induction" policies dating back to 2011 and 2012, the court held these administrative instructions had no statutory backing and could not override the Section 12 notification allowing women into the JAG branch. The bench further declared that the 2023 recruitment policy, which envisaged at least 50% of JAG vacancies for women to "compensate for their previous non-enrolment" but capped their share at that figure, was neutral on the face of it, but discriminatory in effect. "Though neutral in form, it is anything but gender-neutral in application and practice.The evidence of the disparate treatment is writ large in the form of the merit list. female candidates have overwhelmingly outscored their male counterparts," the judgment noted. "The practice of fixing a ceiling limit to recruitment of female candidates has the effect of perpetuating the status quo, which has been historically discriminatory to women candidates. The result of such practice is confinement of women candidates, irrespective of their performance or merit, in their gendered category, thereby being destructive of not just the constitutional scheme but also of the concept of gender-neutrality and merit," it held. Observing that male and female JAG officers form part of the same cadre, face identical conditions of service, and are evaluated by the same selection criteria, the bench said there was no justification for separate merit lists. It directed that future recruitment be conducted through a common merit list, with the list and individual marks made public. It directed the Union of India and the Army to conduct future JAG recruitments without bifurcating vacancies by gender, making it clear that if all deserving candidates happen to be women, all of them must be selected. The judgment it added that women candidates figuring in the merit list beyond the 50% quota as set under the 2023 policy must also be accommodated, and their intake cannot be capped at that limit....