Edited by Deepali Verma
The Indian Navy has decided to assign women sailors to its newest guided-missile destroyer, INS Imphal, in February-March 2024, making it the country’s first warship with separate accommodation for women officers and sailors. Currently, it is under preparation for its operational deployment on the high seas, boosting the navy’s ability to secure Bharat’s economic and military interests, officials aware of the matter said.
INS Imphal got commissioned into the navy on December 26 and is equipped with separate messes (accommodation) for males and females for privacy. This indigenous warship can carry a crew of 360, including 20 women, the officials said. It has berthing facilities for eight women officers and 12 Agniveers with attached washrooms.
Sub Lieutenant Anjali Mohapatra who also happens to be the destroyer’s deputy logistics officer, is the only woman serving on board as of now. The 24-year-old officer is the first woman to be included in the warship’s commissioning crew in the navy’s history.
“We have a different mess for both women officers and sailors. The warship’s layout provides extra accommodation that can be created for them as their numbers will only increase in service. We can convert the nearby messes into berthing areas for women if need be,” the warship’s commanding officer Captain Kamal Kumar Choudhury remarked.
The National Defence Academy alumnus,Khadakwasla, led the commissioning crew which put the 7,500-tonne destroyer through its paces for almost a year that was later commissioned into service at the Naval Dockyard in Mumbai on December 26 on the suggestion of defence minister Rajnath Singh.
The navy’s first women batch of Agniveers recruited under the Agnipath scheme are currently under training requiring them to perform sentry duties at various naval installations and some of them are expected to soon join INS Imphal once they are through with their training, said Choudhury.
The messes for the women officers and sailors are placed in the forward and aft (rear) part of INS Imphal that also houses separate berthing facilities for men. The women sailors’ mess has 12 bunks with entry to the washroom with a provision for accessing the toilet from outside to cater to higher intake of women in the future. If the number of women sailors increases in the nearby messes, they can use the same toilet. The women officers’ mess has a total of six bunks with an attached toilet having an option for entry from outside for the same reason. The most senior women officers will have a separate cabin with two bunks.
“The accommodation is quite good,” expressed Mohapatra. She was commissioned into the service in 2021.
Among the three services, the Navy was the initiator in inducting women in the personnel below officer rank (PBOR) cadre across all streams and accounts for more than 1,000 women Agniveers. The navy is working on employing a workplace equality for its women cadre. No restriction is imposed on the women joining the submarine arm for which they need to volunteer, clear an aptitude test and then undergo rigorous training before being deployed.
In Bharat’s naval history, the first woman officer is set to take the command of a warship early next year. Lieutenant Commander Prerna Deosthalee will assume charge as the commanding officer of fast attack craft INS Trinkat.
Close to 40 women officers are currently serving on board warships. The navy in the year 2021, assigned four women officers to warships after a hiatus of almost 25 years. In a short-lived experiment, women from the navy’s logistics and medical branches were deployed on fleet tanker INS Jyoti in 1997.
Women officers currently serving on board several warships have separate berthing facilities for them. However, that is not the case for women sailors.
