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LANDMARK: Lifts 14-year bar on permanent commissions, clears command roles

Murali Krishnan

letters@hindustantimes.com

New Delhi : The Supreme Court on Monday struck a blow for gender parity in the army, saying that women should be considered for command roles, and that all women officers are entitled to permanent commission. It asked the army to give them permanent commission within three months.

In a judgment hailed for creating a new equality paradigm in the armed forces, the top court, upholding a 2010 Delhi high court verdict, ruled that women officers who joined the Indian Army through Short Service Commission (SSC) are entitled to permanent commission (PC) even if they have more than 14 years of service.

The bench of justices DY Chandrachud and Ajay Rastogi also held that there cannot be an “absolute bar” on women officers being considered for command appointments, paving the way for their elevation to such roles. To be sure, the case was only about permanent commission and command roles in non-combat streams of the army.

Defence minister Rajnath Singh welcomed the judgment. “I wholeheartedly welcome Honble Supreme Court’s judgement on giving the Women officers permanent commission in the Armed Forces. PM Shri Narendra Modi has supported the idea of permanent commission for women & announced the change in policy in his Independence Day speech in 2018”, he tweeted.

A permanent commission allows officers to serve in the army till they retire, unlike the SSC, which is for a specific period of 10 or 14 years. Women can only join the armed forced through SSC; they are not offered ab initio permanent commission in any of the forces. There was no immediate response from the Indian Army. The Centre proposed in February 2019 that permanent commission should be given to SSC-recruited women officers with less than 14 years of service. It also decided that these could only be given in “staff appointments” and not in command roles in specific non-combat streams.

Before this, PC was available to SSC-recruited women officers in the Judge Advocate General (JAG) and Army Education Corps (AEC) which belonged to the Services stream. “All serving women officers on SSC shall be considered for the grant of PCs irrespective of any of them having crossed 14 years or, as the case may be, 20 years of service; The option shall be granted to all women presently in service as SSC officers,” the court ruled on Monday.