It not only confirms women’s ‘just entitlements under law and the right to fair and equal treatment in the workplace’ but exposes systemic exclusion of women in the navy, and grants unprecedented monetary compensation to women officers who lost out on jobs and positions because of it.
Women officers have been inducted into the navy since 1991. In 2008, the Ministry of Defence announced that it would grant permanent commission to women who wanted it. But this did not happen on the ground.
Correcting An Injustice
Noting that the denial of permanent commissions to women short service commission (SSC) officers had left them in the lurch, the judgment said that the ‘injustice meted to them by lost years of service and the deprivation of retiral entitlements must be rectified’.
The judges have now ordered the navy to pay pensions to SSC women officers who were denied permanent commissions and are not presently in service. Those who had appealed before the Delhi High Court and Armed Forces Tribunal to be considered for permanent commissions also qualify for pensions and other benefits and five respondents in a special leave petition will receive a one-time compensation of Rs 25 lakh each.
The navy’s claim was that job positions in certain cadres were ‘saturated’ and, therefore, women SSCs were being denied extensions.
An ‘informal quota has been carved out for male officers to continue in service, even after superannuation’, observed the judges. “It is women officers who are required to exit as a result of the ‘cadre saturation’.”
The navy judgment is significant not because it corrects a historic wrong, which it does, but because it exposes ingrained sexism in the navy. It’s a sexism that comes thinly veiled; in an earlier argument (subsequently prudently dropped), the navy had argued against women on naval ships, many procured from Russia, on the grounds that they did not have separate women’s bathrooms.
“In My Next Birth Too I Will Join The Navy”
Welcoming the decision as the end of a ‘very long journey’, retired Commander E. Prasanna, 48, who joined the navy in 1994 as the only woman officer stationed at INS Rajali, said it was essential to create a level playing field for everyone in the armed forces. “Otherwise, youngsters will prefer to join MNCs and we will lose out on quality personnel,” she said. Prasanna who was represented by advocates Chander Uday Singh, Haripriya and Puja Dhar, is one of the five officers who was granted monetary compensation.
Ironically, the navy has made much of its gender achievements including its first all-woman crew on the INSV Tarini that circumnavigated the globe in 2017. Earlier, in 1993, Commander Ruby Singh became the first Indian woman to lead a platoon in a naval contingent on Republic Day and Sub-lieutenant Shivangi became the first pilot for the navy.
Prasanna, the wife of a tennis coach who has stood by her during her 10-year-long legal battle, says she grew up dreaming of becoming a naval officer. “I have never regretted my choice of career. I only pray that in my next birth too I will join the navy.”
Related stories here:https://www.namitabhandare.com/gender/excluding-women-from-top-army-jobs-is-illegal-supreme-court/
See full Supreme Court judgment here: https://www.livelaw.in/pdf_upload/pdf_upload-371373.pdf
Published in Article-14 on March 20, 2020