An Appeal

1. Emergency (EC) / Short Service Commissions (SSC)were introduced

by the armed forces for expediency to meet the shortage in junior
level leadership in the 3 forces, without any clear government
policy on the matter.

2. The terms of employment framed were arbitrary to suit the

employer’s needs with no concern whatsoever for the employees’
rights. Emergency/ SS Commissions are new forms of employment
devised by the government with no precedence and hence
applying pension and other rules which predate these to
such an exercise is out of context and not justified.

3. Given the high rate of unemployment among the university

graduates in the country, introducing such an employment scheme
for them with mala fide intentions amounted to exploitation of
helpless youth.

4. While the parameters of selection of EC/SSC officers and the duties

they performed after commissioning are exactly the same as those
of Permanent Regular Commission officers (PRC), the former
alone being judged for their suitability for further retention
in service after a period amounts to discrimination. There is
no evidence to show that the performance of all PRC officers of the
same seniority as the EC/SSC officers who are denied PRC after
their SS tenure has been in any way superior.

5. The process of judging the suitability of EC/SSC officers for

retention in itself is neither transparent nor according to any proper
methodology. For the initial courses it was done solely through the
Annual Confidential Reports (ACRs) and then an SSB screening was
introduced which was subsequently withdrawn reverting to the
dependency on ACRs alone. Such lack of consistency is indicative of
the establishment’s confusion in the matter. A youth tested and
qualified in a Services Selection Board being put through the same
entry-level test after he has served for 5 years and his/her
personality has undergone a quantum change stands to no logic or
purpose. As far as the ACRs go, these are invariably prone to the
biases and fallibilities of the reviewing officer and no judgment
based on these can be called fair. If any such performance
evaluation has to be objective and meaningful it has to be
done across the board, with PRC officers also included, over a
period of time, and selection should be on the basis of a minimum
qualifying score after computing the sum total of inputs from
several independent parameters.

6. The 5-year tenure fixed initially for SS Commissions was later

extended to 10 and then 14 years. This indicates that there has
been no justification for the rejection of officers after 5-and-10-year
tenures done earlier and as for those who serve 14 years it is
inconceivable that an officer who could render useful service for 14
long years could suddenly prove to be of no value. The sealing at 14
years can only be seen as a blatant attempt to prevent the officers
 serving 15 years giving rise to the possibility that they may make a
claim for pension on the grounds that Other Ranks are eligible for
pension after that much service. To cut to the chase it is a
system designed to eliminate rather than select thereby
avoid paying pension as much as possible rather than
rightfully reward the service rendered with pension. The
establishment cannot have the cake and eat it too.

7. Civilian employees of various central and state government

departments and public sector undertakings are eligible for pension
after 10 years’ service, while judges are eligible for the same after 6
years’ service and all the central and state legislators get pension
even after being in office for a single day. That being so, these EC /
SSC officers who have served and are serving in incomparably more
rigorous work environments often risking their life and limbs should
be denied their pension is nothing but an absolute travesty of
justice. The gravity of injustice involved becomes all the more
intense for the fact that a number of officers who are so
denied pension are veterans of 1965 and 1971 wars, most of
them above 75 or 70 years and many in the humiliating state
of being dependent on their children for subsistence and
some even languishing in penury; not a state of affairs a nation
that prides in the glory of its arms and is in constant need of their
armed forces being alert and in high morale can afford to let itself
in.

8. If at all a government is financially in dire straits that it just cannot

afford to pay pension to the released officers, it has at least the
moral responsibility of finding ample avenues of resettlement for
these young men and women in civilian life, which it has failed to do
miserably. There have been instances of outright betrayal by
successive governments when they promised to take various
measures but did nothing concrete. The infamous act of the
government at the eve of the war in 1971 dangling the carrot of an
IAS etc EC/SSC Officers Exam by UPSC – with assurance of the
service in arms being recognized while fixing seniority when they
join Civil Service – to boost the morale of the officers and arbitrarily
discontinuing it after 2 years is a case in point. Also hardly in any
instance is the service in arms of an officer being recognized
for fixing the seniority if he or she joins a civil service,
despite government assurances to the contrary.

9. The government has no case that the armed forces have been
following a constant set of rules in the grant of pension to various
categories of personnel since there have been frequent
inconsistency in this regard. For instance SS officers who are
commissioned while serving in the ranks are eligible for pension
after 12 years of commissioned service; almost making it appear
that the majority of SSCOs who join directly from civil after their
graduation are being denied the same benefit as penalty for holding
a university degree. There have been instances of men from the
ranks being granted pension after even 6 or 9 years’ service after
legal battles. In a stark case of discrimination the entire lot of
 Women SSCOs of the navy’s executive branch are not even
considered for the grant of PRCs and released at the end of
their tenure with no pension according to some strange rule the
navy seems to follow.

10. Established democracies like UK and USA have evolved well-

designed and transparent commissioning processes for their armed
forces. In the British Army for example all officers enter the
service only through short service commissions and their
assessment for suitability in service is completed in 2 years.
Subsequently they may choose to serve on an Intermediate Regular
Commission (IRC) for 18 years or a Regular Commission (Reg C) for
35 years. Both are eligible for lump sum gratuity and monthly
pensions, in the case of the former a second gratuity too when they
turn 65 years of age. It is quite obvious that the system is designed
to ensure that service in arms is duly rewarded and there is no
exploitation whatsoever. It also indicates the fact that a service
need not take more than 2 years (which in effect is the initial
training period) to assess the suitability of a candidate for retention
in service. The system the Indian armed forces are practicing of
keeping an officer on short service contract for 5, 10 and 14 years
virtually amounts to an employment with such long probation
periods which could only be called blatant exploitation by the state
of its youth and it is an absolute violation of the fundamental rights
the constitution grants every citizen of this country.

11. An abhorrent system of this kind, besides contravening the law of

natural justice, gravely undermines the all-important combat
potential of our armed forces. SS Commissions have become the
mainstay of the officer corps of our armed forces with the intake of
SS officers increasing every year. The army has even established
one more training institution to train SS officers at Gaya, besides
the Officers Training Academy, Chennai which has since its
inception in 1963 turned out thousands of officers who have and
still are serving with distinction, many even laying down their lives,
despite being discriminated against. These officers cannot be
expected to perform to their full potential in an environment of job
insecurity with the fear of being rejected at the end of their tenure
hanging like a sword of Damocles over their heads. A state of low
morale among such a large segment of young officers who
form the cutting edge of any fight force could have
disastrous implications in national security. It is only widely
known by now that a number of released EC/SSC officers who were
veterans of the 1965 and 1971 Wars (the largest segment of young
officers during the 1971 War was provided by the first 10 SS
courses), are languishing in their old age with no pension or
retirement benefits. Their plight besides reflecting on the morale of
the new SSC officers could highly discourage the country’s youth
from coming forward to take up a career in arms. This could again
be highly detrimental to the national interest since our armed forces
are already suffering from an acute shortage of young officers. The
sensible thing to do would be to go by the British model and provide
employment terms which are transparent and give the young
 officers a sense of belonging while eminently taking care of the
national interest in the long run. Any system which does not
value the paramount importance of its human resources,
especially the junior leadership, is doomed to fail. In short the
discrimination shown so far and is being practiced against
EC/SSCOs by an unscrupulous establishment for petty financial
gains is suicidal for the national ideals. It is not that the number
of affected EC/SSCOs (at not more than 15,000) is so large
that the exchequer cannot cope with paying them pension
and rendering them the rest of the retirement benefits as
applicable to PRCOs. It’s merely a case of penny-pinching policy,
which is disgraceful for a country like India to follow while it ought
to be grateful for the sacrifices our men and women in arms have
been and are still making almost every day since independence to
preserve its integrity.

12. The EC/SSCOs who have been and are being released at the end of
their tenure without pension or retirement benefits are young men
and women who were drawn into the armed forces in an
impressionable age for their patriotic zeal and love for adventure,
signing the dotted line without much of a foresight of the career
awaiting them, and spent the most productive years of their life in
the service of the nation. No country which values its honour
can be so callous as to show the door to these young men
and women when it has had their use without concern for
their future and welfare. It will be a disgrace and a blot on the
nation’s conscience if the prevailing despicable situation is not
resolved the soonest by grant of pension and other retirement
benefits to all EC/SSC Officers who have been released so far,
irrespective of the period they served; while abolishing the system
of SSCOs being released from service against their will and
introducing a fairer system with fixed period of SS tenure with
pension with option to take up Permanent Regular Commission.

Yours faithfully,

S No. Name Signature

TO,