1. The Outlook appears to have played into the hands of an organised lobby which has been persuading the Service HQs and MoD as well as GoI for last 10 yrs to treat the members of Military Nursing Services at par with Regular Commissioned Officers of Indian Armed Forces.2. There have been shocking examples of ignorance and inability to interpret the Army Act and Terms and Conditions under which Females have been appointed into MNS cadre. Ignorance with complicity to misinterpret has done the damage even after The Supreme Court was made to see the reason and convinced that MNS cadre is NOT "REGULAR ARMY" hence the members of it's service, although permitted to put on similar ranks, were NOT same as Regular Commissioned Officers.
3. When I put forward this argument 10 yrs back and supported this with MIML, AA- 1950 and Nursing service Ordinance, even service Headquarters were not supporting us in Medical Dte. The AHQ learned the lesson when after getting the permission to wear same dress, the MNS cadre asked for applicability of entire Army Act rather than only 2 sections as at present!
4. The position is as under:
(a) The Military Nursing Service is an " AUXILIARY CORPS" raised in support of Regular Armed Forces by a Special Ordinance of Govt of India.
(b) The members of this corps are NOT Commissioned Officers. They are appointed by the president of India into this Service and have been granted badges of ranks as per a convention.
(c) The badges of rank do not confer on them the right to demand salute or for that matter they are NOT SUPERIOR OFFICERS and DO NOT get the Punishment Power(In Terms Of AA) by virtue of the rank they wear.
(d) The Canteen, Travel and Accn Parity given to them on the scale of regular offr is a privilege extended and NOT a Ground to demand Equal status or Pay of REGULAR commissioned offr. They are saluted due to the rank on their shoulder but not because they are Senior to a regular commissioned officer.
5. The Army Act is very clear on this. The Babus in Defence Ministry be damned if they can not understand or read and write simple English. They have already done irreparable damage to the Armed Forces.
Brig (Dr) C P Joshi (Retd)
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