The Army’s inexplicable delay in implementing a 10-month-old Cabinet decision to bring women through the Short Service Commission (SSC) route has come for sharp criticism from Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee who has asked Army Chief General J J Singh to prepare and promptly issue necessary orders.

On August 4 last year, the Cabinet approved the scrapping of the Women Special Entry Scheme (WSES) under which lady officers could not go beyond the rank of Captain. Instead, the Cabinet cleared a fresh policy to bring all women officers under the SSC.

This gives women the option to leave after 10 years or get absorbed and go on to avail equal rank and pay as their male counterparts for four more years.

The delay has been chiefly because of bureaucratic roadblocks both in the Army and Defence Ministry. The Army, which indicated today that it is waiting for a “government letter”, said it’s now working to bring a quick close to the scheme now.

Top Ministry sources told The Sunday Express that in the backdrop of the current discourse on the plight of women officers in the Army, the Defence Minister has instructed the Army to ensure that in the end there is equality between men and women officers in all respects.

The Cabinet had said in August that scrapping the WSES would “bring about a parity with the existing time-scale promotions available to the Permanent Commissioned Officers and meet the career aspirations of Short Service Commissioned officers.”

The revised common terms and conditions for women and men officers in the SSC had been finalised and the WSES will shortly be discarded, the Army said this evening.

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