New Delhi, Mar 24: The Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that women Short Service Commission (SSC) officers in the Army, Navy, and Air Force denied permanent commission due to a “systemic disparity” would be entitled to full pensionary benefits.
The top court delivered three separate verdicts challenging the denial of PC (permanent commission) based on policy changes in 2019 and previous Armed Forces Tribunal (AFT) rulings in the Army, Air Force, and Navy.
In the verdict on a plea by Yogendra Kumar Singh related to the Navy, a bench comprising Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi granted PC to several groups of SSC Officers, primarily women, as a one-time measure.
The bench set aside the need for yet another selection board, noting that the officers had been subjected to three gruelling rounds of litigation over 15 years.
The dispute pertained to how the Navy assessed its officers and the appellants, around 25 officers, said that their annual confidential reports (ACRs) were “casually graded” during the years they were technically ineligible for PC.
“We are of the considered opinion that when officers are assessed under the prevailing assumption that they have no future in the service, the appraisal process is inevitably affected from its very inception,” the verdict said and termed this a “circularity” where past ineligibility was unfairly transformed into “deemed unsuitability” for career progression.
As a one-time measure, the bench directed grant of PC to in-service Short Service Commission Women Officers (SSCWOs) inducted prior to January 2009 and SSCWOs who joined after January 2009 in branches excluding law, education, and naval architecture.
In its second judgment on a plea by Lt Col Pooja Pal related to the Army, the bench ordered the grant of PC to several batches of women officers and directed the government to provide pensionary benefits to those who were released from service during the legal battle.
It ruled that the Army’s evaluation process for women officers was “marred by inequality of opportunity” and rooted in a “systemic framework” of discrimination.
The 60-page judgment focused on a group of roughly 73 SSC officers, mostly women, from batches commissioned between 2010 and 2012.
It found that for the first decade of their careers, these women were considered “ineligible” for PC as a matter of policy and, consequently, their ACRs were written by superior officers who assumed the women would only serve a 14-year term.
This led to “casual” or “middling” grades, while their male counterparts were groomed and graded higher for long-term career progression, the court said.
Writing the judgments, the CJI compared the flawed evaluation to “adjusting the lens of a camera to alter the quality of an image captured much earlier”, stating, “The damage had been done years before.”
The Army had argued that it could only grant 250 PC slots per year to maintain a “youngish” profile of the force.
However, the court rejected the idea that this cap was “sacrosanct” or “immutable”, saying that the 250-vacancy ceiling had been breached several times in the past for exigencies such as the Kargil war.
“The invocation of the vacancy cap as a shield against remedial action would be unfair to sustain,” it held.
Invoking its extraordinary powers under Article 142 to ensure “complete justice”, the bench granted PC to all women officers currently in service who met the 60 per cent cut-off in the 2020 and 2021 selection boards, subject to medical and disciplinary clearances.
It said women officers who were released during the pendency of this litigation would be “deemed” to have completed 20 years of qualifying service and be entitled to full pension and consequential benefits with arrears starting from January 1, 2025.
It asked the Army to review its method of evaluating ACRs and cut-offs for future batches to eliminate the “disproportionate impact” on women.
“The inclusion of SSC women officers in the zone of consideration for PC is not a matter of discretion, but of constitutional obligation,” the bench said, adding, “Any expectation to the contrary is inherently illegitimate.”
In its third verdict related to the grant of PC, pension calculations and reinstatement in the Air Force, the bench granted pensionary benefits to a batch of SSCWOs and criticised the force’s “casual” and “arbitrary” methods of performance assessment.
In the lead case of Wg Cdr Sucheta EDN, the bench addressed the grievances of six women officers commissioned in 2007 who were denied PC under a 2019 policy that lifted a decade-long embargo on women seeking permanent roles.
Finding the selection process as fundamentally flawed, it noted that the officers’ ACRs were written at a time when they were expected to be released after 14 years.
Consequently, these appraisals were “casual” and did not evaluate long-term potential, it said.
While the bench declined to order reinstatement to maintain “operational effectiveness”, it said all SSCWOs considered for PC between 2019 and 2021 would be deemed to have completed 20 years of substantive service, making them eligible for full pension and consequential benefits.
The bench took a stern view of the IAF’s failure to accommodate officers on maternity leave and said some appellants were denied a fair chance at PC because their ACRs reflected lower grading during pregnancy or because they missed selection boards due to childbirth.
