Big day for Indian Army: Govt sanctions permanent commission to women officers

The much awaited news is finally here. The MoD has finally issued the official government sanction letter for the grant of Permanent Commission (PC) to Women Officers in the Indian Army.

With this development into place, the women officers in the Indian Army, can now serve larger tenures and thus could attain higher roles in the organisation.

The formal order specifies the grant of permanent commission to Short Service Commissioned (SSC) Women Officers in all ten streams of the Indian Army i.e Army Air Defence (AAD), Signals, Engineers, Army Aviation, Electronics and Mechanical Engineers (EME), Army Service Corps (ASC), Army Ordnance Corps (AOC), and Intelligence Corps in addition to the existing streams of Judge and Advocate General (JAG) and Army Educational Corps (AEC).

Once the documentation process is done, the women officers under Short Service Commission who will exercise the option of PC, will be scheduled for the Selection Board.

With such highly awaited developments in the last few months, the moral of youth and the whole military fraternity is quite high.

There's a huge shortage of officers (more than 9000 presently) in Indian Army alone. Also, the total strength of women officers in Indian Army is very minuscule - 4% of the total commissioned officers in the army.

This development will not only help bridging the shortfall of officers but also will help in improving the gender gap up to some extent.