Awarded in recognition of non-operational services under conditions of special hardship and severe climate.

While all bars observed have been produced in Hindi rather than English, they will frequently be referred to by their English names. At the request of friends, and since the bars are in Hindi and may therefore present identification problems, I have, where possible, attached close-up images of the bars. I hope this will aid in their identification.

Established: 26 January 1960, by the President of India (with effect from 15 August 1947). Revised 17 June 1960.

Obverse: Circular 36-mm copper-nickel, an image of the Nanda Devi mountain peak with a bamboo stand in the foreground. Suspended by a straight-bar suspender. The medal is normally named on the edge.

Reverse: The gate to a medieval fort (actually the gate at Purana Quila in New Delhi?). Above, the Hindi legend "Sainya Seva Medal".

Ribbon: 32 mm, orange-saffron, with two 1-mm stripes, white and green. Orange 10 mm, white 1 mm, orange 10 mm, green 1 mm, orange 10 mm. As it has been so common and so widely produced, there is some variability of the precise shades of the colors in this ribbon. These color variations have no significance (as some have stated).

Outline:

• Jammu and Kashmir(a) for an aggregate of one year of service in Jammu and Kashmir after 27 October 1947, service which qualified for the appropriate bar to the 1947 General Service Medal of for the "Himalaya" bar to the Sainya Seva Medal will not be counted; (b) air force personnel who have carried out a minimum of ten sorties or forty hours of flying after 27 October 1947, with the same limits to overlapping service applying here as well - between the two words on the bar is a depiction of a chinar leaf
• NEFA (a) for an aggregate of one year of service in the North-East Frontier Agency (NEFA) employed in the construction of roads and airfields between 7 October 1952 and 15 November 1958; (b) personnel seconded to the Assam Rifles who have completed an aggregate of one year of service in NEFA (excluding those areas for which the "Himalaya" clasp was awarded, see 01000.000) after 15 August 1947; (c) air force personnel who carried out a minimum of ten sorties or forty hours of flying after 7 October 1952 - the bar is designed to look like a horizontal stalk of bamboo
• Himalaya(a) for an aggregate of one year of service in the defense of the northern in areas (roughly: portions of NEFA, the Tibet borders in Uttar Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir, and Sikkim) and time periods specified by the government; (b) air force personnel who carried out a minimum of ten sorties or forty hours of flying in areas and time periods specified by the government - between the two partial words on the bar (indicated by the space in the Hindi) is a depiction of a pine (cedar?) tree
• Bengal-Assam (a) for an aggregate of one year of service in specified areas on West Bengal and Assam after 26 October 1962; (b) for 10 sorties or 40 hours of flying over specified areas on West Bengal and Assam after 26 October 1962
• Andaman and Nicobar - (a) for one year of aggregate service in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands after 20 May 1966; (b) for 50 hours of flying in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands after 20 May 1966 - at either end of the unusually ornate bar, there is a lotus flower
• Marusthal (Desert)the bar is unadorned