Ahmedabad: The Gujarat high court on Monday declined to stay a woman police constable’s transfer, ruling that domestic difficulties and infant-care responsibilities, while challenging, were not sufficient to derail official postings in a disciplined force like the police.While refusing to interfere with the transfer order, Justice Nirzar Desai pulled up the constable for painting a picture “as if no woman employee has ever faced any hardship, which the present applicant is trying to project. Transfer is an incident connected with the service and therefore, it can be presumed that, at the time of joining the police department itself, the petitioner was very well aware of the challenges that she may have to face.
Therefore, on such flimsy grounds her transfer cannot be stayed and no order can be passed to allow the petitioner-applicant to extend her leave”.
In this case, woman head constable Umerabai Saiyyed was transferred from Tapi district to Kutch in Sep 2024, and three days later, the Kutch SP ordered her posting as well. She wanted her transfer to be delayed and approached the HC on the grounds that she was eight months pregnant. On Jan 22, 2025, the HC ordered the police department to keep the transfer order in abeyance for one year, and she agreed to join the service at the place of new posting in Kutch.A year later, she approached the HC again and requested it to stay her transfer to Kutch for three years, or, if she was to be transferred at all, she should be posted in Mandvi’s Marine police station in Kutch (West). The court rejected the request and said, “It is needless to say that the police force is reckoned for its discipline and therefore, if the case of the present applicant is considered positively, it will make it difficult for the higher officials to maintain discipline within the police force and therefore, such an application cannot be entertained in the larger interest.
