Women officers to make their presence felt in various branches of Indian Navy. From current 6% presence, women workforce is expected to touch 25% in a decade

Visakhapatnam: Women Agniveers are extremely committed and charged up. Interestingly, there has not been a single dropout thus far in the initial two batches of recruitment.

Lauding the performance of women Agniveers during a recent interaction, Flag Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Eastern Naval Command (ENC) Vice Admiral Biswajit Dasgupta says that women Agniveers play a proactive part on a par with their male counterparts.

With 273 women Agniveers joining the force in the first batch, as many as 435 women are getting trained as a part of the second batch.

By the end of the third or fourth batch, the count of women Agniveers is likely to scale up. "The recruitment is gradually improving. Going forward, we are looking for a 20 percent recruitment of women Agniveers into the force as envisaged," Vice Admiral Biswajit Dasgupta exudes confidence.

In order to accommodate women into the forces and make them comfortable at workplace, infrastructural changes were made. A host of new blocks have been facilitated, old blocks have been altered to cater to the requirement of women along with dedicated washrooms. Besides, women wardens and medical staff were taken in to provide enhanced convenience for the women.

Earlier, women in the Indian Navy were into the officer cadre and that too confined to limited branches. The percentage of women officers in relation to the total number of officers is only 6 percent at the moment. "It's because we had women only in a few branches where we thought they were suitable. These branches include medical, logistics, traffic control and meteorology department. However, it's a different scenario now," the Vice Admiral explains.

Going forward, women are going to be inducted in large numbers. As far as the below officer rank is concerned, 20 percent of Agniveers should be women.

"Ten years down the line, a marked increase would be seen in the number of women participation in the Indian Navy in all ranks across all the branches," Vice Admiral Biswajit Dasgupta informs.

With a greater number of branches opening doors for women, their presence in the force is expected to touch 25 percent from the current 6 percent in future.