ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court has ruled that a woman’s marital status cannot deprive her of the right to government employment under the quota reserved for children of deceased or incapacitated civil servants, setting aside a Khyber Pakhtunkhwa service tribunal order that had disqualified a married woman from such an appointment.
Justice Syed Mansoor Ali Shah authored the 10-page judgment, declaring that the rule governing such appointments applies equally to sons and daughters.
“If a son’s marriage does not disqualify him or disrupt the flow of financial benefit to the family, there is no rational basis to hold that a daughter’s marriage should have that effect,” he observed.
The bench, comprising Justice Shah and Justice Aqeel Ahmad Abbasi, directed the concerned department to reinstate the petitioner with full back benefits, stressing that any interpretation excluding a married daughter violates the Constitution’s guarantees of equality and non-discrimination under Articles 25 and 27.
The petitioner, Farakh Naz, was appointed as a primary school teacher in Karak district under the quota for children of incapacitated civil servants after her mother, an employee of the provincial Education Department, retired on medical grounds in 2022. However, the district education officer later cancelled her appointment, citing her marital status as grounds for ineligibility.
Her appeal was dismissed by the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Service Tribunal before the matter reached the Supreme Court. The apex court clarified that the purpose of the rule is to extend financial relief to the family of a deceased or incapacitated employee — not to assess the dependency of individual children.
“In this context, a son and a daughter stand on equal footing,” the judgment stated. “The assumption that a daughter, by reason of marriage, ceases to be connected with or concerned for her parental family is misconceived and rests on outdated social stereotypes.”
The court also criticised the provincial Establishment Department for issuing clarifications describing married women as no longer a “liability” of their fathers, calling the term “deeply insensitive” and reflective of “patriarchal rigidity of thought that has no place under our Constitution.”
“The Constitution is gender-neutral in recognising fundamental rights and consciously directs the state to take special measures for the protection and advancement of women,” the judgment added, noting that the denial of employment to the petitioner contradicted both “the text and spirit of the Constitution.”
