Women Short Service Commission (SSC) officers in the Army, Navy and Air Force denied permanent commission (PC) due to a “systemic disparity” would be entitled to full pensionary benefits, the Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday.In three separate verdicts on petitions challenging the denial of PC based on policy changes in 2019 and previous Armed Forces Tribunal (AFT) rulings in the Army, Air Force and Navy, a Bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi Bagchi used its plenary powers under Article 142 of the Constitution to grant PC to several groups of SSC Officers, primarily women, as a one-time measure.Deciding a petition by Yogendra Kumar Singh and others relating to the Navy, it set aside the need for yet another selection board, noting that the officers had been subjected to three rounds of litigation over 15 years.Around 25 officers had alleged that their annual confidential reports (ACRs) were “casually graded” during the years they were technically ineligible for PC.“We are of the considered opinion that when officers are assessed under the prevailing assumption that they have no future in the service, the appraisal process is inevitably affected from its very inception,” the verdict said and termed this a “circularity” where past ineligibility was unfairly transformed into “deemed unsuitability” for career progression.As a one-time measure, the Bench directed grant of PC to in-service Short Service Commission Women Officers (SSCWOs) inducted prior to January 2009 and SSCWOs who joined after January 2009 in branches excluding law, education, and naval architecture.With regard to cases of the Army filed by Lt Col Pooja Pal and others – relating to a group of roughly 73 SSC officers, mostly women, from batches commissioned between 2010 and 2012 — it said the Army’s evaluation process for women officers was “marred by inequality of opportunity” and rooted in a “systemic framework” of discrimination.The top court said that for the first decade of their careers, these women were considered “ineligible” for PC as a matter of policy and, consequently, their ACRs were written by superior officers who assumed the women would only serve a 14-year term.This led to “casual” or “middling” grades, while their male counterparts were groomed and graded higher for long-term career progression, the court said.Writing the three judgments for the Bench, the CJI compared the flawed evaluation to “adjusting the lens of a camera to alter the quality of an image captured much earlier”, stating, “The damage had been done years before.” The Army had argued that it could only grant 250 PC slots per year to maintain a “youngish” profile of the force.However, the Bench rejected the idea that this cap was “sacrosanct” or “immutable”, saying that the 250-vacancy ceiling had been breached several times in the past for exigencies such as the Kargil war.“The invocation of the vacancy cap as a shield against remedial action would be unfair to sustain,” it ruled.It granted PC to all women officers currently in service who met the 60 per cent cut-off in the 2020 and 2021 selection boards, subject to medical and disciplinary clearances.In the case of Wg Cdr Sucheta EDN of the Air Force, the Bench dealt with the grievances of six women officers commissioned in 2007 denied PC under a 2019 policy that lifted a decade-long embargo on women seeking permanent roles.Finding the selection process as fundamentally flawed, it noted that the officers’ ACRs were written at a time when they were expected to be released after 14 years.Consequently, these appraisals were “casual” and did not evaluate long-term potential, it said.While declining to order reinstatement to maintain “operational effectiveness”, the Bench said all SSCWOs considered for PC between 2019 and 2021 would be deemed to have completed 20 years of substantive service, making them eligible for full pension and consequential benefits.It took exception to the IAF’s failure to accommodate officers on maternity leave and said some appellants were denied a fair chance at PC because their ACRs reflected lower grading during pregnancy or because they missed selection boards due to childbirth.“The inclusion of SSC women officers in the zone of consideration for PC is not a matter of discretion, but of constitutional obligation. Any expectation to the contrary is inherently illegitimate,” the top court said.