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Union of India v. Lt Cdr Annie Nagaraja

Civil Appeal · 2020 INSC 300Decided 17 Mar 2020
Civil Appeal Nos. 2182-87 of 2020
Dr. Justice D.Y. Chandrachud · Justice Ajay Rastogi

Background

A group of women officers who had joined the Indian Navy as Short Service Commission (SSC) officers in the Logistics, Air Traffic Control and Education branches, some as far back as the early 1990s, were denied consideration for Permanent Commission (PC) and were discharged after completing their tenure. The Navy relied on a 2008 policy letter that made PCs available to women only prospectively, for officers inducted after January 2009, in a few specified branches. The women argued that an earlier, more generous 1999 policy letter had already entitled them to be considered for PC under the Navy's standing regulations, and that the 2008 policy wrongly cut them out. Their claims had earlier succeeded in part before the Delhi High Court and the Armed Forces Tribunal, and the Union of India appealed those rulings to the Supreme Court.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court held that the 2008 policy letter, in so far as it was made prospective and restricted to only a few cadres, could not override the terms of the Navy's 1999 policy communication, which had already linked the grant of Permanent Commissions to Regulation 203 of the Navy's own service regulations: a right the Union Government and Naval authorities had simply failed to honour. The Court directed that all serving SSC women officers in the Education, Law and Logistics cadres be considered for PC on the same terms as men, with consequential benefits including promotions and retiral benefits. For a smaller group of women officers who had already left service years earlier because of this policy failure, the Court used its special constitutional powers (Article 142) to order, as a one-time measure, that they be treated as having completed pensionable service and paid Rs 25 lakh each in compensation for the lost years of their careers. The appeals were accordingly disposed of.

Lesson Learnt

Where a government department fails for years to implement its own stated policy and a court's earlier directions, affected individuals are entitled not just to prospective correction but to real remedial relief, including backdated entitlements and compensation, for the injustice already suffered.

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

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