Mumbai: The Bombay high court has directed the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) to consider the application of an aspirant for the post of sub-inspector who was declared unfit and ineligible for the post due to tattoos on his right and left arm.
The court held that as the applicant was making efforts to get the tattoos erased, the appointing body should consider the applicant in light of the undertaking given by him.
A division bench of Justices Naresh Patil and Z.A. Haq was hearing a writ petition filed by Sangharsh Lonekar challenging the decision of the Central armed police force to oust him from the selection process for the post of sub-inspector.
Mr Lonekar said that after he got through the written examination, the medical officer deemed him unfit as he had tattoo marks of about 4x5 cm over the front of his left forearm and 29x4.5 cm over his right arm.
A panel of experts who the petitioner referred to said that the size of the tattoo was more than 1/4 th of the particular part of the body and hence he could not go ahead in the selection process nor be eligible to be included in the select list.
The counsel for the petitioner Anupam Chattopadhyay submitted that Mr Lonekar had applied for the post after an advertisement had been floated in January wherein no condition with regards to tattoos was mentioned.
Hence CISF should not be permitted to apply conditions of recruitment retrospectively and debar Mr Lonekar.
The counsel further submitted that Mr Lonekar had attended two sittings with Dr Sunil Deshmukh to erase the tattoos through laser treatment and had managed to get 60 per cent removed and undertook to get the remaining tattoo removed, should he be allowed to be part of the selection process, the list of which is going to be announced on August 15.
After hearing the submissions, the bench quashed the unfit report of Mr Lonekar and directed the CISF to take an appropriate decision in respect to the final selection of the petitioner after completion of the selection process.
