‘Sexual dysfunction no reason to deny job’

NEW DELHI: The Delhi high court has asked the Centre to clarify its stand on the necessity and possibility of enacting a law on the lines of UK’s gender recognition Act that prohibits denial of job to those sexual dysfunctional.

Concerned with the petition filed by a woman who couldn’t get a job in Sashastra Seema Suraksha Bal because she is sexually dysfunctional, the court wants to know whether the ground for rejecting her application is relevant for the post she had sought.

Counsel Geeta Luthra said her client fulfilled mandatory requirements and qualified all requisite exams but was declared medically unfit by a  panel on the ground that she suffers from pseudohermaphroditism (born with secondary sex characteristics).

Luthra said the panel’s report was arbitrary and discriminatory and its decision against her client’s fundamental right to equal employment.

A bench of justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Mool Chand Garg observed, “One cannot be refused opportunity of employment on the basis of sexual dysfunction unless a reasonable nexus is proven between the requirement of the job and the inability of the candidate due to the sexual disability.”

About five years ago, the petitioner had undergone gonadectomy, which is surgical removal of an ovary or testis.

“Independent doctors have declared her medically fit and said she is physically, emotionally and psychologically a woman,” Luthra claimed.
b_rakesh@dnaindia.net