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Informist, Tuesday, Mar. 24, 2026

 

 

NEW DELHI – The Supreme Court Tuesday directed the government to give pension benefits to women Short Service Commission officers in the Indian Air Force who were denied permanent commission due to arbitrary assessment under the minimum performance criteria, introduced in 2019, and annual confidential reports. As a one time measure, all the Short Service Commission officers who were considered for the grant of permanent commission in all three selection boards convened in 2019, 2020, and 2021, shall be deemed to have completed substantive qualifying service of 20 years and shall be entitled to pension and all consequential benefits, except arrears of pay, said the court.

 

 

The pension shall be fixed on the basis of the date of completion of the deemed service of 20 years but arrears, if any, shall be paid to women Short Service Commission officers only with effect from Jan. 1, 2025. Further, the grant of permanent commission to women officers who have already been granted permanent commission by the selection boards convened in 2019, 2020, and 2021 shall not be disturbed, said the court.

 

The annual confidential reports of petitioners, who were women Short Service Commission officers, were authored in an environment where their suitability for permanent commission was never meaningfully contemplated, said a bench led by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant. The subsequent use of such reports, which are not truly indicative of their suitability for long-term career progression, to determine their eligibility for permanent commission is thus inherently unfair and arbitrary, said the bench, also comprising Justice Ujjal Bhuyan and Justice N. Kotiswar Singh.

 

The top court said that the minimum performance criteria, introduced in 2019, was implemented in a haste without providing petitioners a reasonable opportunity to meet such criteria prior to the conduct of the first selection board. Without providing any opportunity to the women Short Service Commission officers to meet the newly-prescribed minimum performance criteria and without making adequate provision for officers who were unable to be considered for permanent commission due to lower medical category and lesser average annual confidential report score on account of an intervening pregnancy amounts to arbitrariness, said the court.

 

The top court was hearing petitions from women Short Service Commission officers seeking the grant of permanent commission after being denied such relief through successive selection processes. The petitioners had challenged the government's 2019 policy that prescribed a new minimum performance criteria. The petitioners said that the 2019 policy was implemented impulsively, in undue haste, depriving several meritorious and otherwise qualified women officers of a reasonable gestation period to prepare for the selection board.

 

The petitioners said their annual confidential reports were authored in an environment where it was presumed that they would be released upon completion of 14 years of service, without any prospect of long-term retention. Deciding permanent commission on the basis of those annual confidential reports was necessarily casual and not oriented towards evaluating suitability for career progression, said the petitioners.  End

 

Reported by Surya Tripathi

Edited by Akul Nishant Akhoury

 

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