For decades, India has carried a quiet but profound injustice — the neglect of Emergency Commissioned Officers (ECOs), Short Service Commissioned Officers (SSCOs), and Women Special Entry Officers (WSEs). These officers surrendered fundamental rights, commanded troops, served in field and counter-insurgency areas, and upheld the President’s Commission with honour. Yet once released, the State denied them pension, resettlement and even recognition.
This injustice was engineered over years — through distorted policies, administrative instructions contradicting law, AVSC restructuring that collapsed rank identity, and OROP tables that openly downgraded constitutional military rank. SSCOs were reduced to a twilight category: neither regular officers nor recognised veterans.
The silence finally broke in courtrooms. At AFT Chandigarh, judicial members examined pension entitlement under Rule 30 of Pension Regulations 1961 and questioned contradictions that had long been ignored. For the first time, SSCOs sensed relief. But the hope was shaken when AFT Chennai dismissed an SS doctor-soldier’s case as a “policy matter,” forcing him toward a costly, exhausting SLP in the Supreme Court. This is not justice — it is disorder.
Yet the Hum Hai Na movement transformed pain into disciplined constitutional activism. No agitation, no politics — only RTIs, archival research, pension table analysis and legal interpretation. It exposed fundamental contradictions: misuse of Army Instructions 11/S/64, sidelining of Rule 30, and rank degradation through OROP and AVSC.
When soldiers are driven into lifelong litigation, democracy has failed them.
India now needs a Parliamentary White Paper — a permanent national document acknowledging how and why SSCOs were denied their constitutional due and forming the basis of corrective legislation.
This struggle is not about pension alone. It is about honour, constitutional rank and the dignity of the President’s Commission.
