First batch of 5 women Army officers commissioned into Regiment of Artillery

Category : Defense Published on: May 02 2023

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In a historic first, the Indian Army has inducted five women officers into its Regiment of Artillery and three of them have been posted to frontline formations along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) with China.
Lt Mehak Saini, Lt Sakshi Dubey, Lt Aditi Yadav, Lt Pious Mudgil and Lt Akanksha have joined the Army's premier artillery units after successfully completing their training at the Officers Training Academy (OTA) in Chennai.
Out of the five women officers, three are posted to units deployed along the borders with China and the other two in "challenging locations" near the frontier with Pakistan.
The Regiment of Artillery is a major combat support arm and it has around 280 units that handle various gun systems including Bofors howitzers, Dhanush, M-777 howitzers and K-9 Vajra self-propelled guns.
Lt Saini has been commissioned into a SATA regiment, Lt Dubey and Lt Yadav into field regiments, Lt Mudgil into a medium regiment and Lt Akanksha has been inducted into a rocket regiment.
In January, Chief of Army Staff Gen Manoj Pande announced the decision of commissioning women officers into artillery units. The proposal was later approved by the government.
In a significant move, the Army in 2019 began the process of inducting women into the military police.
In January, Captain Shiva Chauhan from the Army's Corps of Engineers was posted at a frontline post in Siachen Glacier, in the first such operational deployment of an woman Army officer at the world's highest battlefield.