On Wednesday, the Supreme Court withheld the release from service of ten woman naval officers requesting the award of a permanent commission (PC) as scheduled for 31 December this year.
A holiday bench composed of judges Indira Banerjee and Aniruddha Bose took notice of senior lawyer Meenakshi Arora’s representations, appeared on behalf of women naval officers, and provided temporary relief.
In the video conferencing hearings, the bench claimed that the Centre and the Chief of Naval Staff were able to file their responses to the female officers’ petitions and scheduled their pleas for a further hearing on 19 January.
“We will direct that the matter be listed on January 19 along with pending writ petitions. In the meanwhile, there will be a stay on order of December 18 (on release/retirement of women officers),” it said.
The bench claimed that no equity in favor of the officers would result in the provisional order.
Senior Advocate R Balasubramanian has appeared on the issues for the Center.
Ten women Short Service Commission (SSC) officers, including Annie Nagaraj and CDR Vijayeta, have filed two separate petitions requesting the grant of a permanent commission to the Indian Navy.
On December 31, they were to be discharged from the hospitals.
Earlier, in a historic decision on March 17 of this year, the high court had ordered the Centre and the Navy to give PC to the Indian Navy Short Service Commission (SSC) female officers and requested them to complete the modalities within three months.
Subsequently, it prolonged the deadline until 31 December for the enforcement of its judgment on the award of PCs to female SSC officers in the Navy, following the Centre’s motion in June to prolong the deadline by six months, citing the COVID-19 pandemic.
Prior to this, on February 17, the Apex Court issued the same PC relief to SSC female army officers, ordering that female and male officers should be handled fairly.
