New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled that women short service commission officers (SSCOs) denied Permanent Commission (PC) across the Indian armed forces will be entitled to full pension benefits, flagging systemic bias in how their service records were assessed. A bench led by Chief Justice Surya Kant, with Justices Ujjal Bhuyan and N Kotiswar Singh, held that these officers would be deemed to have completed the 20 years of service required for pension eligibility, even if released earlier.
The ruling came on multiple petitions, including one by Wing Commander Sucheta Edan, challenging PC denials following the 2019 policy changes and subsequent Armed Forces Tribunal orders.
The court found that Annual Confidential Reports (ACRs) of women officers were routinely assessed with the prior assumption that they would never be granted PC -- a presumption that, the bench said, fundamentally corrupted their performance evaluations and undermined their eligibility when the PC avenue was eventually opened to them.
“Since the avenue for PC was offered to them much later, this presumption undermines the entire assessment of their suitability for any career progression undertaken prior to that,” Chief Justice Kant observed, adding that unequal access to criteria appointments had placed women SSCOs at a measurable disadvantage against their male counterparts.
The court further noted that where the evaluative framework lacked the rigour applied to male officers, it had inevitably distorted service records, comparative merit, and career trajectories.
Under the Short Service Commission scheme, officers are initially commissioned for 10 years, extendable to 14. Those not granted PC exit service at the end of their tenure, ordinarily without full pension and with no access to senior command roles.
