Guwahati: The Gauhati High Court has granted relief to a Central Armed Police Forces (CAPF) aspirant whose candidature was rejected after he was found to be one centimetre short of the prescribed height, directing the recruitment authorities to measure him again.
Justice Nelson Sailo, hearing the candidate’s second writ petition on August 12, 2026, held that the appeal against the Physical Standard Test (PST) rejection had been decided without any fresh measurement. The court found that the appellate authority had simply restated the original reading of 164 cm recorded at the recruitment centre on August 26, 2025, against the minimum requirement of 165 cm.
The petitioner had applied in the 2025 Staff Selection Commission recruitment for Constable (General Duty) in the CAPFs and Rifleman (GD) in Assam Rifles. He was disqualified at the PST stage solely on height. The rejection slip itself informed him that he could prefer a written appeal the same day before the appellate authority through the Presiding Officer. He did so. The later rejection of that appeal, the court said, did not show that his height had been re-measured.
“As per the PST rejection slip…, while rejecting the candidature of the petitioner for deficiency of height, it was indicated that he may prefer an appeal in writing before the appellate authority on the same day through the Presiding Officer. The petitioner admittedly preferred the appeal, but from the rejection of the appeal it is not discernible that his height was re-measured,” Justice Sailo observed.
A perusal of the appeal rejection, the court added, showed that the measurement taken on August 26, 2025, had itself been treated as the ground for dismissing the appeal. With the prescribed minimum standing at 165 cm and the recorded height at 164 cm, and with no indication of a second measurement, the High Court directed the authorities to measure the petitioner again and communicate the result to him.
A long procedural fight before the second order
The case did not reach the August 12 hearing in a single step. After the PST rejection, the candidate first approached the High Court. That bench directed the authorities to decide his pending appeal expeditiously. When the direction was not complied with, he filed a contempt petition. During the pendency of the contempt proceedings, the authorities informed him on May 12 that the appeal had been rejected. He then filed a fresh writ petition challenging that rejection. It was this second petition that Justice Sailo decided.
The published reports do not name the petitioner. The order also does not, on the available record, declare him selected or treat 164 cm as 165 cm. The immediate relief is narrower and procedural: the appellate process cannot be a rubber stamp of the first measurement. If the force invites an appeal on height, the appeal must include an independent re-measurement, and the candidate must be told the result.
Why 165 cm, not 170 cm
For Constable (GD) recruitment, the general male height standard is 170 cm. The SSC notice of September 5, 2024, relaxes that figure for several categories. Male candidates from Assam, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, and those belonging to the Garhwali, Kumaoni, Dogra and Maratha groups, are required to meet 165 cm. That is the bar applied in this case. Further relaxations exist for Scheduled Tribe candidates and for candidates from other North-Eastern states.
Height is checked at the PST, which sits after the computer-based examination and the Physical Efficiency Test and before the Detailed Medical Examination. A PST rejection on height typically ends the attempt unless an appeal or a court order reopens the measurement.
The wider litigation over millimetres
The Gauhati order sits inside a larger wave of CAPF height disputes. The Ministry of Home Affairs’ Revised Uniform Guidelines of May 20, 2015, contain Clause 2(d): while measuring height, a fraction of a centimetre less than 0.5 is to be ignored, and 0.5 cm and above is to be rounded off to the next higher centimetre. Several High Courts have held that this rounding-off cannot be postponed to the medical stage and must operate at the PST itself.
The Gauhati High Court has already applied that clause in other 2025–26 matters. In one batch, candidates from Assam measured at 164.5 cm, 164.6 cm, 164.7 cm and 164.8 cm were held entitled to be treated as 165 cm and sent to the Detailed Medical Examination. In another case, a female Assam candidate measured at 154.6 cm was treated as 155 cm, the relaxed female minimum for the state.
The Bombay High Court, in October 2025, set aside the disqualification of two 21-year-old aspirants measured at 164.7 cm and 164.6 cm, calling the PST rejections “illegal and arbitrary” and directing that their heights be rounded to 165 cm. The Delhi High Court has granted similar interim relief where a candidate measured 164.6 cm. The Madhya Pradesh High Court has rounded 169.6 cm to 170 cm for a Sub-Inspector aspirant. Courts have been less willing to help candidates who fall below the 0.5 cm threshold—for example, a Calcutta High Court bench declined relief where the recorded height was 169.4 cm against a 170 cm standard.
The present Gauhati case is different from those rounding-off victories. The recorded figure here is a whole centimetre short: 164 cm, not 164.5 cm or 164.6 cm. The court’s intervention is about the integrity of the appeal, not about treating 164 as 165. That distinction matters. A fresh measurement could confirm 164 cm, produce a decimal that triggers rounding, or yield 165 cm or more. Until that measurement is done, the candidate remains in the process only to the extent the court has reopened the height check.
What the order does and does not decide
The High Court has not diluted the statutory height standard. Paramilitary recruitment is built on fixed physical norms; courts generally refuse to rewrite those norms and interfere only when the measurement or the appeal is shown to be unfair, incomplete or contrary to the 2015 guidelines.
The practical effect is limited but important for the petitioner. After a year of litigation—PST in August 2025, a first writ, a contempt petition, an appeal rejection in May 2026, and a second writ—the authorities must put him on the stadiometer again and tell him the reading. If he meets 165 cm on a proper measurement, or if a recorded fraction of 0.5 cm or more is rounded up under Clause 2(d), he can move to the next stage. If the new reading remains 164 cm or below 164.5 cm, the original disqualification can stand on a record that this time includes a genuine second measurement.
For CAPF recruitment boards, the message is procedural: an appeal against a height rejection is not a paper review of the first slip. Where the rejection slip itself invites a same-day appeal, the appellate authority is expected to re-measure and to say so on the face of the order. In a process where a single centimetre can end a career attempt, the High Court has insisted that the centimetre at least be counted twice.
