Open more avenues for women officers: Parliamentary panel to Defence Ministry

Parliamentary panel asked Defence Ministry to create more avenues for female officers in the armed forces and pave way for their induction into institutions such as the National Defence Academy.

New Delhi: A parliamentary panel on Thursday asked the Defence Ministry to create more avenues for female officers in the armed forces and pave way for their induction into institutions such as the National Defence Academy.

"The Ministry should create the necessary infrastructure for inducting female officers for the new streams and pave ways for intake of female officers into the NDA courses," the Standing Committee on Defence said its report on functioning of Sainik Schools. At the moment, women officers are only allowed entry into non-combat arms such as education, logistics and legal but they are still barred from fighting arms such as infantry, armoured and artillery wings. The committee was "dismayed" to note that there were 11 incidents of ragging in these institutions in the last three years. It said though only 11 cases of ragging have surfaced in the Sainik Schools in the last three years, "there could be some more which could not come to the fore." It asked the ministry and the administration of the Sainik Schools to "study the best practices being taken by various colleges, technical institutions and replicate the same in these schools to achieve nil level of such incidents in these prestigious schools."