Permanent commission in Army: SC allows pleas of women officers, says ACR evaluation process flawed

The Supreme Court on Thursday struck down the Army’s evaluation criteria to assess women short service commission officers for permanent commission calling it a “systemic, indirect discrimination” against them and asked it to grant permanent commission to all such officers who have fulfilled the 60% cut off in last September’s selection. Such officers will only have to meet medical criteria set last August and disciplinary and vigilance clearances, a bench of Justices DY Chandrachud and MR Shah ruled.

“The administrative requirement imposed by the Army… of bench-marking these officers with officers lowest in merit in the corresponding male batch is held to be arbitrary and irrational and shall not be enforced while implementing the decision of this court” in the Babita Puniya case, the court said.

The pattern of evaluation disproportionately affected women, it said. “This disproportionate impact is attributable to the structural discrimination against women, by dint of which the facially neutral criteria of selective ACR evaluation and fulfilling the medical criteria to be in SHAPE-1 at a belated stage, to secure permanent commission disproportionately impacts them vis-à-vis their male counterparts. The pattern of evaluation, by excluding subsequent achievements of the petitioners and failing to account for the inherent patterns of discrimination that were produced as a consequence of casual grading and skewed incentive structures, has resulted in indirect and systemic discrimination,” the order said.


The court said the Army’s insistence that the women officers meet such standards was an attempt to bypass the court ruling. It had caused much psychological and economic harm to them and was an affront to their dignity. The fact that the pattern of evaluation will in effect lead to women being excluded from the grant of permanent commission on grounds beyond their control, is indirectly discriminatory against officers on short commission.