NEW DELHI – Army Chief Gen Bipin Rawat on Saturday cited several reasons toargue why it was difficult in assigning women to frontline combat role.
“Our orders are that a lady officer will get a hut in the COB, then thereare orders that we have to cocoon her separately. She will say somebody ispeeping, so we will have to give a sheet around her,” Rawat said in aninterview to CNN News 18.
Rawat questioned whether a women officer with commanding responsibilitiescan stay away from her post for long. “I am ready, it is not that Army isnot ready (for combat role for the women). Will she command? Ok, so now Imake her a commanding officer. She is commanding a battalion.
“Do I put a restriction on her to say that in that command tenure you willnot be given maternity leave? If I say that, there will be ruckus created,he added.
He said that in frontline combat there are risks of officers gettingkilled..
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“See, I am not saying a woman who has children doesn’t die. She can alsodie in a road accident. But in combat, when body bags come back, ourcountry is not ready to see that,” Rawat said.
He added that there are women officers engaged in exercises like mining andde-mining operations and also manning the air defence system.
“We have women officers as engineers, they are doing mining and deminingwork. In air defence, they are manning our weapon systems. But we have notput women in frontline combat because what we are engaged in right now is aproxy war, like in Kashmir,” he said.
