NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court Wednesday set aside a Navy selection board's decision denying permanent commission (PC) to Commander Seema Chaudhary of the Judge Advocate General (JAG) branch and directed it to reconsider her claim within six weeks.
The Navy will now assess the 2007-batch short service commission (SSC) officer for a fourth time. She was among the women officers whose petitions led to the landmark 2020 ruling that opened PC to women in the Navy.
A bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V Mohana held that the board, in its 2024 decision, failed to adequately weigh her annual confidential reports (ACRs). In most of them, the bench found, she met the grading required for promotion.
"Such non-recommendations cannot overshadow the overall assessment reflected in those reports," the CJI said.
The bench directed that her ACRs from July 2008 to October 2014, in which the PC recommendation column was left blank, be treated as positive recommendations. She had been recommended for PC in 2013 and 2014.
Three assessments, three rejections
Chaudhary's case has moved between the Navy, the Armed Forces Tribunal (AFT) and the Supreme Court for over five years.
In 2020, the Navy turned her down, citing a lack of vacancies. In 2022, acting on an AFT direction, it assessed her alongside women officers of the 2011 and 2014 batches and found her low in inter-se merit.
Chaudhary challenged that before the Supreme Court. Her counsel argued that being assessed with later batches had caused her "serious prejudice" and went against the 2020 ruling. In February 2024, the court agreed. Noting that she was the only serving JAG officer of her batch, it ordered a "standalone" assessment, uninfluenced by earlier decisions.
The board rejected her again in April 2024.
Her counsel has since argued that her ACRs carry no adverse remarks and that the Navy relied on old non-recommendations the court had asked it to disregard. Counsel questioned how an officer graded fit for promotion could be found unfit for PC. Chaudhary has also alleged that the denial followed a workplace harassment complaint she made against a male officer.
In May last year, a bench led by Justice Kant told the Navy to "shed its ego" over the case.
The Navy's case
In court Wednesday, Attorney General R Venkataramani argued that the Navy had complied with the court's directions. A standalone assessment, he said, rules out comparison with other officers or vacancies but does not mean ignoring an officer's record.
Senior officers in different postings had not recommended her for PC over five years, he said, and PC does not follow automatically from favourable reports or service extensions.
In 2024, the Centre had defended assessing her with later batches as a way to ensure "a fair opportunity was granted to all concerned officers".
Sources in the defence establishment said the service sees the case as a matter of merit. An officer with around 14 years of service has at least 14 ACRs and in most of Chaudhary's, her scores fell short of the PC benchmark, they said.
PC, the sources said, rests on an overall assessment of an officer's entire service record. With so many ACRs, written by different reporting officers across postings, the outcome cannot be put down to the bias of any particular individual.
The sources also questioned the standalone assessment. Other women officers have competed for PC on comparative merit and judging one officer in isolation would put her on a different footing from them, they argued. That, they said, would be unfair to them.
The selection board now has six weeks to take a fresh call.