Women in Indian Armed Forces: In a First, a Woman Officer to Take Over Command of Warship INS Trinkat

What’s in Today’s Article?

• Why in News?
• About INS Trinkat
• About Shaliza Dhami
• Women in Indian Armed Forces

Why in News?

• The Indian Navy has appointed the first woman commanding officer in a naval ship in line with the Navy’s philosophy of “all roles-all ranks” to deploy women in the service.
• The officer (Shaliza Dhami), a Lieutenant Commander, would be commanding INS Trinkat, a fast attack craft based in the western seaboard.

About INS Trinkat

• INS Trinkat is a patrol vessel of the Indian Navy designed and constructed by Garden Reach Shipbuilders and Engineers in Kolkata, West Bengal.
• The patrol vessel carries out fisheries protection, anti-poaching, counter-insurgency and search-and-rescue operations in coastal areas and in the exclusive economic zone.
• The vessels of the class are named after Trinkat Island - one of the 24 islands that make up the Nicobar Islands chain, located in the northeast Indian Ocean between the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea.

About Shaliza Dhami

• Group Captain Shaliza Dhami is an officer in the Indian Air Force (IAF).
• She is the first woman officer in the IAF to receive a permanent commission and the first woman to become a Flight Commander.
• She became the first woman IAF officer to get selected in a front-line combat unit.
• As per sources, the officer is a qualified navigation instructor and has been involved in training observers inducted into the Navy.
• She is also learnt to be the first woman officer who served as an observer in the Navy’s Tupolev Tu-142 maritime patrol aircraft and this is for the first time that a woman officer would assume command of a ship.

Women in Indian Armed Forces

• There are 10,493 women officers serving in the Indian Armed Forces, including its medical services.
• The Army, being the largest of the three services, has the largest number of women officers at 1,705, followed by 1,640 women officers in the IAF and 559 in the Navy.
• Several women officers in the Army are also commanding various units across the country.
• The Navy’s submarine arm was also open to women, for which they would need to volunteer to join, clear an aptitude test and undergo rigorous training prior to deployment.
• The overall strength of women Agniveers has now crossed the 1,000 mark, adding that these statistics stand testament to the philosophy of ‘all roles, all ranks’ approach to deployment of women in the service.

Q1) What is the AGNIPATH Scheme?

The Union Cabinet approved an attractive recruitment scheme in 2022 for Indian youth to serve in the Armed Forces. The scheme is called AGNIPATH and the youth selected under this scheme will be known as Agniveers.

Q2) What is INS Kirpan?

INS Kirpan is the name of a Khukri-class corvette formerly commissioned by the Indian Navy. It was recently decommissioned and handed over to the Vietnam People's Navy. It is the first active warship that India has ever gifted to another country.

Source: A first: Woman officer to take over command of warship INS Trinkat