4 min readNew DelhiMar 25, 2026 02:57 AM ISTThe apex court said the Navy failed to disclose its evaluation criteria and vacancy calculations to the officers. (Express file)The Supreme Court Tuesday directed the armed forces to grant permanent commission to eligible women officers, and ordered full pension and consequential benefits for those who had already been released, treating them having completed 20 years of qualifying service required to earn a pension. Their pensions will be fixed accordingly, with arrears payable from January 1, 2025, it said.A bench led by CJI Surya Kant and comprising Justices Ujjal Bhuyan and N K Singh, in three separate but related judgments, also highlighted “systemic” flaws and structural bias in how Short Service Commission Women Officers were evaluated for permanent commission across the Army, Navy and Air Force. The verdicts are the latest chapter in a long legal battle for gender parity in the armed forces. This glass ceiling was shattered by the top court’s landmark verdicts in 2020 in the cases of ‘Secretary, Ministry of Defence vs Babita Puniya’ and ‘Union of India vs Annie Nagaraja’ cases, which mandated that women be considered for PC on par with men. However, when the military subsequently convened selection boards to implement these rulings, many women were rejected, due to which they moved courts to challenge the fairness of the evaluation process itself.The three verdicts Tuesday are the culmination of protracted legal battles across multiple courts for the officers of each force. In the Air Force case, the women officers approached the Armed Forces Tribunal (AFT) and the Delhi High Court after being denied permanent commission and released in 2021 under a newly introduced 2019 policy, but both forums dismissed their pleas. In the Army case, after the top court’s Babita Puniya ruling opened the doors for women, the appellants were evaluated by regular selection boards but rejected on comparative merit; AFT dismissed their challenge in 2024, prompting their appeal to the top court.The Navy officers’ legal journey was perhaps the most arduous. Following the court’s Annie Nagaraja ruling, they were rejected by a December 2020 selection board. Their subsequent challenge was remanded by the apex court in 2022 because the Navy had submitted evaluation criteria to the AFT in a “sealed cover”. When the AFT subsequently ordered yet another fresh selection board, the female officers approached the Supreme Court seeking finality.Across all three cases, the primary similarity that emerged is the military’s reliance on Annual Confidential Reports (ACRs) — yearly performance evaluations — to determine an officer’s merit for PC. The Supreme Court noted that these ACRs were written years ago, during a time when government policy explicitly barred women from receiving a permanent commission. Because assessing officers knew these women would only serve a limited tenure, they graded them casually, reserving the highest marks for male officers whose long-term career progression depended on them.The bench noted that “the cumulative consequence was a systemic pattern in which women officers… consistently received lower gradings, not due to lack of merit, but due to the absence of any perceived career horizon”. While the flawed ACRs were a common thread, the court also addressed specific arbitrary practices unique to each branch of the military.Female Army officers argued they were systematically denied “criteria appointments” — roles involving higher command responsibilities — and career-enhancing courses, which negatively impacted their overall scores. In the case of the female Air Force officers, the dispute centred on a 2019 human resource policy that introduced new minimum performance criteria, including mandatory grades in in-service courses. The court noted that the Navy failed to disclose its evaluation criteria and vacancy calculations to the officers before the selection boards convened. This, it ruled, “violated basic norms of fairness and transparency.”Ananthakrishnan G. is a Senior Assistant Editor with The Indian Express. He has been in the field for over 23 years, kicking off his journalism career as a freelancer in the late nineties with bylines in The Hindu. A graduate in law, he practised in the District judiciary in Kerala for about two years before switching to journalism. His first permanent assignment was with The Press Trust of India in Delhi where he was assigned to cover the lower courts and various commissions of inquiry. He reported from the Delhi High Court and the Supreme Court of India during his first stint with The Indian Express in 2005-2006. Currently, in his second stint with The Indian Express, he reports from the Supreme Court and writes on topics related to law and the administration of justice. Legal reporting is his forte though he has extensive experience in political and community reporting too, having spent a decade as Kerala state correspondent, The Times of India and The Telegraph. He is a stickler for facts and has several impactful stories to his credit. ... 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