Army looking to open over 400 permanent commission for women in new fields of warfare

New Delhi [India] Jan 08 (ANI): Amid the ongoing debate for inducting women in combat roles in the forces, the Indian Army is planning to provide 400 permanent commission for ladies in the field of languages, cyber and space operations.

The work in this direction has been going on for the last few months and the government is expected to make announcements in the coming months.

"We see a lot of opportunity for lady officers in the cyber and space operations which are coming up very fast due to changing nature of warfare. Women can be permanently inducted as specialist officers there and serve for long periods," senior Army sources told ANI.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had recently cleared setting up of cyber and space agencies for the defence forces to tackle the challenges in these fields, they said.

According to the sources, there is a requirement of over 400 lady officers to take care of these issues. The need for language specialist officers can also fully be taken care of by the lady officers as it is felt that the forces lack interpreters for Chinese, Sinhalese, Myanmarese and Vietnamese languages. Women officers, in addition to that, would provide continuity in this field as they would be posted for longer periods and can develop a super specialisation in these areas.

"We deal with these forces on a very regular basis and there have been situations in social gatherings where the two sides end up just smiling at each other due to language barriers. With specialist women officers holding this front, we can overcome these issues," the sources said.

In the past, women officers have been given permanent commission in the legal and education corps already.

The Army is also looking to induct women as jawans in the military police wing to help troops in operations.

The women officers were inducted initially as short service commission officers where they had to leave the service after a maximum of 14 years.