Defence Minister Rajnath Singh welcomed SC’s judgement on Permanent Commission for women in Army

Defence Minister
Rajnath Singh welcome Supreme Court’s judgement on giving the Women officers
permanent commission in the Armed Forces. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has
supported the idea of permanent commission for women and announced the change
in policy in his Independence Day speech in 2018.

A historic
decision to allow women in field operations came earlier when the then defence
minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced that women will be inducted into the
Military Police. The recruitment process has started in 2019. The plan was to
recruit women in roles ranging from probing crime cases to assisting the army
in field operations wherever required.

There have
been instances where certain women officers have been in the job for nearly
twenty years, while SSC term terminates in fourteen years. In 2019, defence
ministry granted a permanent commission to women in all 10 branches of the
Indian Amry, including Signal Corps, intelligence, aviation, engineering,
service corps and ordinance corps.

Before 2016,
women made up just 2.5 percent of India’s armed forces, working in mainly
non-combat roles. As of January 2019, 3.89 percent of the army personnel
comprised women, while 6.7 percent of the navy and 13.28 percent of the air
force personnel respectively were women.

As of June
2019, women were inducted in all branches of the Indian Air Force, with terms
and conditions for women officers being issued from time to time. Rajnath Singh
said “The Government of India is working to strengthen the ‘Stree Shakti’ in
our Armed Forces and we stand committed to move forward in this direction.”