The Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled that women officers of the Short Service Commission (SSCWO) of the Indian Defense Forces, who were denied permanent commission (PC) due to unfair appraisals and skewed assessments, will get retirement benefits as a “one-time measure”.
Using its extraordinary power under Article 142 of the Constitution, a bench headed by Chief Justice of India (CJI) Surya Kant said, “As a one-time measure, the appellants SSCWOs and intervening SSCWOs who have been discharged from service while pending such proceedings, whether before the Armed Forces Tribunal (AFT), the Supreme Court, before this Court, or in the interregnum, shall be deemed to have completed objectively qualifying service of 20 years and shall be entitled to pension and all consequential benefits.” “Therefore, with the exception of late salaries.”
Read also | “You Don’t Marry a Servant”: What the Supreme Court Said, and Why It Matters for Modern Marriages
The court order came as a “one-time measure” as retirement benefits are only available to uniformed men and women upon completion of 20 years of service. The court explained that the pension would be determined based on the date of completion of the “presumptive service” of 20 years. Only SSCWOs will be paid pensions from January 1, 2025, according to the decision.
For those who continue to serve as a result of court orders, the court has deemed them eligible for PC on the condition that they have scored more than 60% marks in previous selection boards, fulfill medical criteria and have disciplinary and vigilance clearance.
The order (in Army Matters Group) specified that the benefit of pension would not extend to SSCWOs of Judge Advocate General (JAG) and Army Education Corps (AEC) cadres, as they are eligible for PC since 2010.
Likewise, in the Navy Matters Group, the court held that only those SSCWOs inducted before January 2009 are eligible for PC. Among those who enlisted in the Navy after January 2009, the court excluded law, education, and marine engineering where the benefit of a PC already existed.
The order came on separate batches of petitions filed by SSCWOs of Army, Navy and Air Force who belonged to the 2010 and 2011 batches and were deemed eligible for PC in the selection boards conducted in 2020 and 2021. The Supreme Court ruling that first paved the way for women to get PC across all arms in the Army came in February 2020 in the Babita Poonia case. But by then, the damage had been done to the petitioners in this case – their Annual Confidential Reports (ACR) were casually classified by their superiors knowing that they had never been in the area of a PC.
Read also | Religious conversion results in loss of Scheduled Caste status: Supreme Court
Citing this disadvantage vis-à-vis male SSCOs, the bench, which also included Justices Ujjal Bhuyan and N Koteswar Singh, said: “We find that the PC’s rejection of SSCWOs was not merely the result of individual assessments, but the result of a systemic framework rooted in assumptions that entrenched disadvantages in career progression.”
She said the evaluative framework applied to evaluate the performance of SSCWOs lacked the “depth and rigor” applied to their male counterparts and that these evaluations inevitably affected their service records, relative merit, and career progression. They even lost access to appointments and courses during their careers.
Without prejudice to the selections made by the Selection Boards for 2020 and 2021, the Court allowed all SSCWOs who were aggrieved by the results of the Selection Boards held after 2021 to pursue their remedies in accordance with the law.
The court noted that in the Lt. Col. Nitisha case in March 2021, the court highlighted the discriminatory standards faced by SSCWOs and noted the need for adjustments in the evaluation process. Reiterating its earlier direction, the order said: “The method of evaluating ACRs and severance for future pay should be reviewed, in order to examine the disproportionate impact on SSCWOs who become eligible for permanent commission in subsequent years of their service.”
The court was handling petitions filed by 73 Army SSCOs, 25 Navy SSCOs, and 6 Air Force SSCOs. While the majority of these were women, there were some male SSCs who claimed that they were at a disadvantage due to the change in policy in the wake of the Babita Punia rule, which gave women an opportunity to compete for police posts, thereby reducing the share of male officers.
They were represented by senior advocates Menaka Guruswamy, V Mohana along with advocates Rakesh Kumar, Pooja Dhar, Tanya Shri among others, while senior advocate Rekha Bali assisted the court as amicus curiae.
The court said that male SSCWOs could not reasonably expect “vacancies to remain exclusively male,” particularly when excluding SSCWOs from consideration for appointment to the PC was deemed unconstitutional and impermissible by the then Supreme Court.
The Center submitted confidential records before the court to prove that there was no discrimination in allotment of marks to SSCWOs. Additional Solicitor General (ASG) Aishwarya Bhatti appearing for the Center said the criteria applied may seem like ‘exclusion’ criteria but the Army’s policy in awarding PC is to select the best and in keeping with the larger good of keeping the force young and motivated, which requires officers to be mentally and physically strong.
