New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear a plea filed by a transgender who was refused a cabin crew position by national carrier Air India owing to her sexual orientation.
Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices A.M. Khanwilkar and D.Y. Chandrachud said they would hear after two weeks the petition of Shanavi Ponnusamy, who alleged she was not hired by Air India because she is a transgender and the vacancies in the cabin crew were earmarked only for men or women.
Ponnusamy, who had undergone gender surgery in 2014 to change into a woman, moved the apex court to scrap the airline’s hiring criteria which included a group discussion and a personality screening test for those willing to apply for cabin crew jobs.
Ponnusamy, born in 1989 in Tamil Nadu, graduated in engineering in 2010. She learnt about an advertisement on July 10, 2017 by Air India for the post of a female cabin crew for its Northern Region office in Delhi for an initial period of five years.
