Disability pension will now be given without any hindrance after the Supreme Court in a recent judgement held that a soldier who was declared fit by the Army at the time of entry into force will no longer have to prove that the disability (mental or physical illness) he contracted was on account of his military service. The judgement has brought cheer in the Army as personnel who faced prospect of premature retirement due to acute hypertension, heart ailments, neurological and mental disorders and diabetes, found it extremely hard to relate these illnesses to their arduous service conditions.
The Bench of Justices TS Thakur and R Banumathi dealt with this issue in a batch of 27 petitions filed by the Union Government against a sympathetic view being taken in favour of the discharged soldiers in various decisions of the Armed Forces Tribunal. For the Army, once the Medical Board held a particular illness not to be attributable or been aggravated on account of military service, there was seldom scope for reconsideration.
Turning the tables on the Army against such a stiff rule, the apex court decided to rule in favour of the affected soldiers. “A soldier cannot be asked to prove that the disease was contracted by him on account of military service or was aggravated by the same,” the Bench said. Under Regulation 173 of the Pension Regulations for the Army, 1961, a soldier is entitled to disability pension if his disability is beyond 20 per cent and the said disability can be attributed to or aggravated by his military service.
Twenty-seven such Army personnel, mostly jawans, were before the court. All of them were eligible under the first rule having disability beyond 20 per cent. They had illnesses ranging from seizures, schizophrenia, hypertension, diabetes, neurotic depression, personality disorder, and epilepsy. The Court found their service records to show no traces of these illnesses at the time of entering the force. Even the Medical Board was not in a position to justify that such illness could not be traced at the time of joining military service.
On these facts, the Court held, “respondents (soldiers) having been discharged from service on account of medical disease/disability, the disability must be presumed to have been arisen in the course of service which must, in the absence of any reason recorded by the Medical Board, be presumed to have been attributable to or aggravated by military service.” The Court summed up this finding in the hope that in future, the Army and the Armed Forces Tribunal keep this as a yardstick to decide cases.
Moreover, the Bench noted that payment of disability pension is a beneficial provision and ought to be interpreted liberally in favour of the disabled army personnel and their families.