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Supreme Court finds denial of permanent commission to women officers rooted in “systemic discrimination”
Judges say flawed evaluation processes and assumptions undermined women’s career progression
Court orders one-time pension relief for some officers, but rules out reinstatement or notional promotions
The Supreme Court of India has ruled that women serving as Short Service Commission (SSC) officers cannot be denied permanent commission (PC) across the Army, Navy and Air Force, finding that the refusal was rooted in ‘systemic discrimination’.
A bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justices Ujjal Bhuyan and N Kotiswar Singh held that the women SSC officers were evaluated on the basis of presumptions that undermined their career progression.
SSC allows officers to serve for a limited tenure, usually up to 14 years, after which they must leave service unless granted Permanent Commission. PC, on the other hand, enables officers to serve until retirement, offering long-term career progression, leadership roles, pension and other service benefits.
Women were first inducted as SSC officers in the armed forces in the early 1990s. However, the option of PC for women came much later, with wider access emerging only after 2019.
The ruling came in a batch of petitions, including those filed by Wing Commander Sucheta Edan and others, challenging the implementation of policy changes introduced around 2019 governing the grant of permanent commission.
The court pointed out that the appellants’ performance reports were written on the assumption that they would not have real career growth, since they were not eligible for PC in their first ten years. When that opportunity was later opened to them, this earlier assumption weakened the basis on which their suitability had been judged, and unfairly affected their chances of being considered on merit for PC.
“When officers in the Army and Navy are evaluated under the prevailing assumption that they have no future in the service, the appraisal process itself becomes structurally distorted,” the order said. “Years of assessment conducted without reference to long-term career progression cannot later be deployed to the disadvantage of such officers when they are suddenly placed in the competitive fray for PC.”
The court observed that denying PC to women officers was rooted in an unfair and biased evaluation framework and was “a consequence of systemic discrimination”, while examining the concerns of women Army officers, reported by legal news portal Bar and Bench. “The inequality of opportunities has affected their inter se merit,” the bench said.
The court also lifted the cap on limiting the number of women officers eligible for PC to 250 per year, saying it was “neither rigid nor sacrosanct and may be breached when the method of consideration for PC is unfair and unequal”.
In the Air Force, the court also found that new performance criteria introduced in 2019 were applied too abruptly, without giving officers a reasonable opportunity to meet them. “Even after obtaining the minimum Categorisation, there was insufficient time to improve it further before the next board, particularly since such courses were conducted only twice a year,” the order stated.
The Supreme Court also said that officers who had never been evaluated for career growth should not have been denied PC based on how long they had served.
The court issued separate directions for each of the three services, as per the Bar and Bench report. For the Army, it clarified that consideration for PC can no longer remain exclusive to male officers. It also directed that PC already granted to women officers should not be disturbed.
In the Navy, the court upheld the vacancy model adopted in a 2020 selection process as a one-time measure, but criticised the failure to disclose evaluation criteria and vacancy calculations in advance, saying this adversely impacted women officers.
For the Air Force, while the court found the assessment process to be arbitrary, it said reinstatement of officers who had already left service would not be in the interest of operational effectiveness. However, it added that this could not be a ground to deny them all benefits.
Beyond career progression, the judgment also grants limited relief to some women officers who had already left service. Those covered by the ruling will be deemed, as a one-time measure, to have completed 20 years of service and will be entitled to pension benefits, but not arrears.
At the same time, the court said that notional promotions would not be granted, noting that such measures could affect the structure and functioning of the armed forces.