SC upholds Army promotion policy, orders more posts

The Armed Forces Tribunal had last year quashed the promotion policy after holding that it violated right to equality by prescribing preferential promotions to officers from select arms – Armoured Corps, Infantry, Mechanised Infantry in the Combat Arms cadre. The tribunal had also held that the promotion policy was unfair since it trampled upon the legitimate expectation of the officers serving in other cadres such as a Combat Arms Support and Service.

On Monday, the top court set aside that order and clarified that the officers in service streams did not constitute a single cadre. The Army, the court said, has three major streams which are a separate cadre: Arms like infantry, armoured corps and mechanised infantry; Arms Support like artillery, engineers, air defence and signals; and Services like Army Service Corps and Army Ordinance Corps. This means that officers commissioned into the Army in a given batch cannot expect that the government will maintain batch parity for promotion among officers of Arms, Arms Support and Services.

About the Arms Support stream, the apex court took note of a submission by Additional Solicitor General Maninder Singh that the government was willing to create 141 additional vacancies to accommodate these officers to prevent any disenchantment among those serving in the Army. Describing the government’s stand as “heartening”, the court upheld the policy while directing the government to create 141 more positions.