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Secretary, Ministry of Defence v. Babita Puniya & Ors.

Civil Appeal · 2020 INSC 198Decided 17 Feb 2020
Civil Appeal Nos. 9367-9369 of 2011
Dr. Justice D.Y. Chandrachud · Justice Ajay Rastogi

Background

Women officers serving in the Indian Army on Short Service Commissions (SSC) had long been denied the option of Permanent Commissions (PC) available to their male counterparts, despite performing comparable duties for over a decade. A PIL and connected petitions led to a 2010 Delhi High Court ruling in the women officers' favour; the Union of India's appeal against that ruling reached the Supreme Court, where, years into the litigation, the government proposed a 2019 policy letter offering PC to SSC women in ten streams, but restricted them to staff (non-command) postings and resisted extending the benefit to officers who had already crossed 14 or 20 years of service.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court rejected the government's blanket, policy-based justifications, citing women's "physiological limitations," "motherhood," and similar stereotypes, as not amounting to the "reasonable restriction" needed to justify treating women differently under Article 14. It accepted the policy of granting PC to all serving SSC women officers but struck down the restriction confining them to staff appointments only, holding there was no reasoned justification for an absolute bar on women receiving command or "criteria" appointments. The Court directed that all serving women SSC officers be considered for PC regardless of having crossed 14 or 20 years of service, with consequential benefits of promotion and pay, and gave the government three months to comply.

Lesson Learnt

The judiciary will strike down even long-standing institutional policies, including in the Armed Forces, when they rest on gender stereotypes rather than genuine operational necessity; equal treatment under Article 14 requires the State to justify differentiation between men and women with concrete reasons, not generalisations.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

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