Denied a day job for being a woman, Sumitra wins 37-yr battle against PSU giant

Sumitra was 24 when she first applied for the peon or khalasi (helper) position at the state-owned Indian Oil Corporation’s (IOC) LPG bottling plant in her village Guda in Haryana’s Karnal. The pay was a measly Rs 34/day, but it was a job that came with pensionary benefits, and Sumitra was certain she would crack it — after all, she made it to the interview.

But when the final appointment letters came, 43 of the 49 people who had applied from her village made it through, but she was not one of them. “I was told it’s because I’m a woman. All 43 gradually got promoted to the post of supervisor, and eventually earned a monthly salary of around Rs 1.5 lakh and pension benefits. But I was left to work for private companies and earn between Rs 100 and Rs 14,000 a month.”

Today, 63-year-old Sumitra feels vindicated. On September 17, the Supreme Court found the IOC’s ground for refusal discriminatory and awarded her compensation of Rs 12 lakh. For Sumitra, the ruling came after 36 years of legal battle — longer than her actual tenure would have been. “My husband wrote letters to the then chief minister and prime minister, but nothing came of it.”

Sumitra was registered as an unemployed person with the Employment Exchange in Gharaunda, Karnal, when the IOC decided to acquire village land to set up an LPG bottling plant.

Sumitra’s husband Satbir Singh, who has closely followed the legal battle over the years, says: “The IOC acquired 120 acres of land—80 acres of which belonged to the village panchayat and the remaining 40 acres was acquired from farmers—promising jobs to local youths.”

Among those who made it to the interview was Sumitra, who had studied up to Class 12. All 49 shortlisted candidates were asked to appear for an interview on October 26, 1988.

“All 43 others from our village were selected as daily wagers, and after two years, had their services regularised at the plant. Sumitra and I, meanwhile, remained without regular employment and continued working for factories and private companies,” Singh says.

Story continues below this ad

In 1989, she approached a sub-judge in Karnal, who ruled in her favour. This came after a deputy manager at the IOC admitted that Sumitra “had fulfilled all the eligibility conditions but was not taken as she was a woman”.

Subsequent court rulings in the Karnal district court in 1993 and the Punjab and Haryana High Court in October 2025 went against her. This January, Sumitra approached the Supreme Court. In its defence in the SC, the IOC argued that Sumitra’s claim was based on the deputy commissioner’s recommendation that providing a job to everyone whose land was acquired was “neither legally binding nor mandatory”.

“The question, however, which was required to be examined, was somewhat different. The issue is whether the appellant, having been treated as eligible, called for interview and subjected to the same recruitment processes as like [the] other candidates, could thereafter be excluded from consideration merely because she was a lady?” said a Bench of Justice Aravind Kumar and Justice Vipul M Pancholi.

The explanation that the work involved handling of cylinders, working at odd hours, and predominantly with male employees “cannot be a lawful basis for excluding an otherwise eligible woman candidate when Corporation’s own recruitment requisition declared that women were eligible”, the court said.

Story continues below this ad

Much has changed since she first approached court in 1990 — she’s now older, has two grown sons, both unemployed, and an illness forced her out of a job and into early retirement. The family now gets by with Satbir Singh’s income of Rs 20,000 as clerk-cum-supervisor at a factory in Panipat.

“I deserved more — at least pensionary benefits extended to others who were recruited with me in 1988,” she said.