PIB, February 17

Raksha Mantri Shri Rajnath Singh has welcomed the Supreme Court’s judgement on Permanent Commission for women in Army. “I wholeheartedly welcome Hon’ble Supreme Court’s judgement on giving the Women officers permanent commission in the Armed Forces. Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi has supported the idea of permanent commission for women and announced the change in policy in his Independence Day speech in 2018,” he tweeted.

“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,” said Raksha Mantri.

“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, the Defence Ministry granted a permanent commission to women in all 10 branches of the Indian Army, including Signal Corps, intelligence, aviation, engineering, service corps and ordinance corps,” added Shri Rajnath Singh.

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.

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.

Shri 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.”