Women officers will be given equal opportunity: Indian Army chief

INDIAN Army Chief General MM Naravane on Thursday (20) termed the recent Supreme Court order granting permanent commission and command postings to women officers “enabling”, and said it will give “a lot of clarity moving forward”.

“Indian Army does not discriminate any soldier based on religion, caste, creed, or even gender. The outlook of the Indian Army has been throughout like this and that is why we started inducting women officers as early as in 1993,” he told the Indian media.

The Indian Army has taken the initiative to induct women in its rank and file, and the first batch of 100 women soldiers is undergoing training at Corps of Military Police Centre and School, he highlighted.

“The Supreme Court’s decision is a welcome one as it brings out a sense of clarity and purpose to gainfully employ officers for better efficiency of the organisation. I must assure that everybody in the Indian Army, including women officers, will be given equal opportunity to contribute to the nation as also progress in their careers,” said Naravane.

Women officers, he added, were being sent letters on the option permanent commissioning.

On the situation in Jammu and Kashmir, the Army chief said terror incidents had seen a downturn. The armed forces were maintaining pressure on terror groups, he added.

There is an external dimension to the decrease in cross-border terrorism, he said, in oblique reference to the ongoing Financial Action Task Force (FATF) plenary.

Pakistan may have to rethink strategy as even China realised they cannot back their all-weather friend all the time, the Army chief noted.

A sub-group of the global terror financing watchdog FATF on Tuesday recommended continuation of Pakistan in the ‘Grey List’ for its failure to check terror funding.

On the proposed creation of a theatre command exclusively for Jammu and Kashmir, he said the subject was at “very preliminary stages of discussion” and ideas were being “bounced around”.