It sounds bizarre, but it is a truth—a young girl from the hills is fighting a legal battle due to her short height. She is not an ordinary girl but a Civil Services qualifier. The girl, Anupriya Rai, secured the 189th All India Ranking in the Civil Services Examination (CSE), 2024, but was denied entry into the Indian Police Service (IPS) for allegedly not meeting the minimum height requirement of 150 cm. Anupriya’s height is 147 cm. And this short height led her to seek legal asylum.
A resident of Champawat in the Kumaon region, she approached the Uttarakhand High Court in an attempt to secure height relaxation of 5 cms as she belonged to the hilly region, where natives are traditionally short-statured. She approached the court, arguing that she was entitled to a height relaxation.
While asking the Union Govt and the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) to file their counter affidavits in the case, a division bench of Justices Ravindra Maithani and Alok Mahra ordered to keep one post of IPS in the Civil Services Examination, 2024, vacant as an interim measure till the next date of hearing.
The Centre has to file counter affidavits within four weeks. The next hearing is scheduled for Feb 11.
The HC also issued a notice to the chairman of the medical board, which had declared Rai unfit for all technical services, including IPS, due to height.
Rai virtually knocked on the High Court after getting disappointment at the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT), which dismissed her application on Nov 13, observing that although she belonged to the Kumaon region, the waiver applied only to reserved category candidates.
It should be mentioned here that natives of the Kumaon region, along with Gorkhas, Assamese, and those from Nagaland, are eligible for height restriction relaxation of 5 cm. But the tribunal said since Rai belongs to an unreserved category, she did not fulfill the conditions to claim height relaxation.
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