Woman officer takes army to SC over lack of childcare facilities

A female lieutenant colonel, the mother of a two-year-old child, has approached the Supreme Court , alleging harassment by Indian Army authorities for posting her temporarily to a place that did not even have a crèche.

Lt Colonel Annu Dogra, 39, the petitioner in the case, is serving as an officer in the Judge Advocate General (JAG) department of the Indian Army in Jodhpur. In November 2018, she was posted to Kamptee in Nagpur district to act as judge advocate in the court martial of another officer. Her husband is also an army officer and is deputy JAG in Jodhpur.
Lt Col Dogra, in her petition filed on Friday, claimed that her temporary posting to Kamptee entails her travelling from Jodhpur to Nagpur every time the court martial proceedings resume and this “deprives her of the fundamental right of tending to her infant child by being sent to different locations from Jodhpur which do not even provide the basic facility of crèche”.
Lt Col Dogra said the temporary posting “entails her to undertake movement of over 1,600 km along with her child alone at a short notice.
This had led to “neglect of her very small child due



to the absence of family and community based care arrangements at the current place of duty in Nagpur”, she said.
She also said that because of the attitude of the army, her husband has had to travel with her and take care of her child while she attended to her official duties.
Lt Col Dogra’s petition also said that her representations to higher authorities to relieve her of her duties in Kamptee on compassionate grounds had gone unheeded. The army’s move to post a woman officer with an infant to look after was is in violation of the National Policy for Children.
The policy was issued by the ministry of women and child development in 2013 and provides for the all-round development of children by protecting their rights.
“The policy advocates to provide and promote creche and day care facilities for children of working mothers, mothers belonging to poor families, ailing mothers and single parents and promote appropriate baby feeding facilities in public places and at workplaces for working mother in public, private and unorganized sector,” the petition said.
When contacted, an army spokesperson refused to comment on the matter.