Ponung Doming first woman from NE to become Colonel

ITANAGAR: A tribal woman from Arunachal Pradesh has become the first female officer from the Northeast to be promoted to the rank of Colonel in the Indian Army. Ponung Doming, the lady in her mid-30s who hails from Pasighat in the East Siang district of the state, is currently posted in Leh. With the promotion to Lieutenant Colonel, she moves from the Corps of Engineers to take over the command of a Border Roads Task Force (BRTF) unit in strategically important Leh. Born to Olom Doming and Jimmi Dai Doming of Pasighat, Col. Doming pursued her studies at the Government Daying Ering Higher Secondary School and the IGJ Government Higher Secondary School, both in Pasighat. She was the top student among tribal students in Class XII.

Col. Doming, who did her civil engineering at the Walchand College of Engineering in Maharashtra, was commissioned into the Indian Army as a lieutenant in 2008. Four and a half years later, she was promoted to the rank of major. She served on the United Nations Peacekeeping Force mission in April 2014 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Her interest in joining the Indian Army grew during her college days, but owing to the non-completion of the course, she did not. After her engineering degree in 2005, she got a placement in a leading MNC in Kolkata, where she worked for about two years. She appeared for an exam conducted by the Service Selection Board in Allahabad. She made it to the Army in 2008 and joined the Officers Training Academy in Chennai. “My advice to young aspirants of our home state and the region is to dream big and, above all, have the courage to achieve or fulfil that,” she said when asked if she has any advice for the younger generation, especially girls who are intending to make their way into the army.

On being flooded with young aspirants taking her suggestion online as she has become an inspiration for many, she said, “I will consider myself blessed if I am able to inspire even a single person to do whatever little we can do for our country.” Chief Minister Pema Khandu took to Twitter to congratulate Doming. “Colonel Ponung Doming’s career in the military is an inspiration for girls in #Arunachal Pradesh. With a promotion to the rank of Colonel, she now moves from the Corps of Engineers to the Border Roads Task Force (BRTF) in the strategically important sector of Leh,” the chief minister said in his official Twitter handle recently.

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