India’s Supreme Court Seeks Answers on Transgender Applicants’ Access to Teaching Jobs
India’s Supreme Court in New Delhi asked the Delhi authorities on October 16, 2026, to explain why teaching vacancies are advertised separately for men and women and how transgender applicants are accommodated within that system. Navbharat Times reported the development on October 21.
The court order asks which rules govern vacancy notices issued by the Delhi Subordinate Services Selection Board (DSSSB). The court wants to know whether those rules require vacancies to be divided by gender. If they do not, the authorities must explain the purpose of the division; if they do, they must justify its use. The court also asks whether there are plans to include a third-gender category in the notices.
One petitioner is Indian teacher Jane Kaushik, a transgender woman. According to LawChakra, she is seeking separate teaching vacancies for transgender people, relaxation of age and minimum qualification requirements, and rules for their recruitment to public employment. On April 10, the Supreme Court had already allowed her to apply under the transgender category regardless of the gender specified in a vacancy notice.
A connected petition by Praveen Singh concerns age relaxation. According to an ANI report, the Supreme Court asked why the Delhi High Court had not used a power under its own service rules to relax age requirements in view of the socio-economic discrimination faced by transgender people.
The respondents were given 15 days from the order to file affidavits. The petitioners may respond before the next hearing, scheduled for November 19. The order does not yet decide the merits of the dispute and does not itself introduce new quotas or recruitment rules.
Photo: Subhashish Panigrahi / Wikimedia Commons, December 11, 2019. CC BY-SA 4.0. Resized and converted to WebP without cropping; the derivative is available under the same licence.
