New Delhi, October 28–29, 2026: The Supreme Court on Wednesday set aside the Indian Navy Selection Board’s April 12, 2024, decision denying Permanent Commission (PC) to Commander Seema Chaudhary, a 2007-batch Short Service Commission (SSC) officer in the Judge Advocate General (JAG) Branch, and directed a fresh assessment within six weeks.
A bench comprising Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V. Mohana held that the Selection Board failed to adequately consider her favourable Annual Confidential Reports (ACRs) and gave undue weight to earlier instances in which senior officers did not recommend her for PC. The court observed that non-recommendations cannot overshadow the overall assessment reflected in the reports, which spoke of the officer’s high performance. It noted that she had secured the requisite grading for promotion in most of her ACRs and questioned how an officer meeting the prescribed promotion criteria could be deemed unsuitable for Permanent Commission.
The bench specifically directed that ACRs covering the period from July 14, 2008, to October 31, 2014 in which the PC recommendation column was left blank be treated as containing positive recommendations. Chaudhary had been recommended for PC in 2013 and 2014. The court clarified that it was not mandating consideration of every ACR from her entire service record; competent authorities would determine which reports to examine, subject to its directions. It identified two principal errors in the April 2024 assessment: reliance on ACRs from 2015 to 2021 (where no recommendation for PC was recorded) and the conclusion that she lacked the requisite grading despite highly satisfactory performance.
Background and Service Record
Commander Seema Chaudhary was commissioned as an SSC officer in the Indian Navy’s JAG Branch on August 6, 2007. She was promoted to Lieutenant on August 6, 2009, and to Lieutenant Commander on August 6, 2012. She received service extensions in November 2016 and August 2018 and became the first officer of her batch to be promoted to the rank of Commander in 2019. In August 2020, she was informed that she would be released from service in August 2021.
She was among the women officers whose petitions led to the landmark March 2020 judgment in Union of India v. Lieutenant Commander Annie Nagaraja, which struck down the Navy’s 2008 policy that had restricted Permanent Commission for women SSC officers (making it prospective and limited to certain branches) and directed that all serving women SSC officers in the education, law, and logistics cadres be considered for PC.
Litigation History
Chaudhary’s claim has been considered and rejected on three prior occasions:
- In 2020, the Navy denied PC citing lack of vacancies.
- Following directions from the Armed Forces Tribunal, she was assessed alongside officers from the 2011 and 2014 batches and found low in inter-se merit.
- In February 2024, a bench headed by then Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud, deciding her review petition, held that prejudice had been caused and ordered a standalone assessment by a reconvened Selection Board, uninfluenced by earlier decisions or Armed Forces Tribunal observations. The court noted that she was the only serving JAG officer of the 2007 batch and permitted a proportional increase in vacancies under Article 142 as a one-time measure if required.
The Selection Board rejected her again on April 12, 2024. She subsequently filed a contempt petition, arguing that the rejection ignored the February 2024 directions and reflected systemic bias. In May 2025, a bench of Justices Surya Kant and N. Kotiswar Singh expressed strong disapproval of the Navy’s approach, remarking that “enough is enough” and urging the authorities to “shed their egos.”
Attorney General R. Venkataramani, appearing for the Navy, submitted that Permanent Commission must rest on comparative merit and an overall assessment of the officer’s entire service record. He argued that a standalone assessment does not require the authorities to disregard successive non-recommendations or treat PC as an automatic entitlement arising from service extensions or favourable reports. The court, however, concluded that the April 2024 decision contained material errors and ordered the Selection Board to reconvene and reconsider the claim within six weeks in accordance with its observations.
This order marks the fourth consideration of Commander Chaudhary’s case for Permanent Commission and underscores the Supreme Court’s insistence on faithful compliance with its earlier directions in the context of women officers’ entitlement to PC following the Annie Nagaraja judgment.
