Over a thousand women have cleared the National Defence Academy (NDA) examination out of a total of nearly successful 8,000 candidates, News18 has learnt. This is the first time ever that women candidates appeared for the exam conducted by the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) on November 14. The results were declared on Wednesday.
These 1,002 women candidates will now appear for the Service Selection Board and their medical tests, after which 19 of them will be shortlisted for next year’s NDA course.
News18 was the first to report that around 20 women cadets will be admitted to the NDA in the first go, to join the Army, Navy and Indian Air Force subsequently as officers.
The NDA will admit a total of 400 cadets next year, of which the Army will take 208 candidates, including 10 women. The Navy will have an intake of 42 candidates, including three women, while the IAF will admit 120 candidates, of which six will be women.
In a written reply to a question in the Rajya Sabha, minister of state for defence Ajay Bhatt had said that the total number of applicants for the exam was 5,75,856, of which 1,77,654 were women.
The NDA is modifying its infrastructure, putting in place a strong security apparatus and initiating appointments of women instructors, doctors including gynaecologists, and other requisite support staff, and taking other steps to welcome the women cadets into its campus next year for the first time.
Located in Pune’s Khadakwasla, the NDA was formally inaugurated in 1955. It currently has a total strength of 18 squadrons, each of which comprises around 120 cadets. The institution has about 2,020 cadets at present across its six terms.
The cadets join the NDA for their pre-commissioning training after their class 12 board exams.
As per government sources, over six lakh candidates apply for the four NDA entrance and Combined Defence Services exams every year. The examinations are conducted by the UPSC.
In September, the Supreme Court had ruled that women be inducted into the NDA from this year itself, and not from next year as sought by the Centre.
So far, women officers joined the Army from Officers Training Academy (OTA), Chennai, and the Navy and IAF from the Indian Naval Academy and Air Force Academy, where they got admitted after their graduation.
The NDA has already been working to add two more squadrons to its existing 18 and increase the annual intake of military cadets.
Former Assistant Chief of Integrated Defence Staff (ACIDS) at Headquarters Integrated Defence Staff (HQ-IDS) Major General Arvind Bhatia (retd) had earlier told News18 that the idea under discussion was to progressively have around 120-150 women cadets in the NDA at a given time.
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