Mumbai: The Bombay High Court said that a pension could not be equated to a bounty payable at the sweet will and pleasure of the govt and dismissed a batch of 70 petitions filed by the Centre that challenged Armed Forces Tribunal (AFT) Mumbai rulings. The tribunal granted ‘disability’ pension to military personnel, attributing diabetes, obesity, spondylitis, hypertension, ulcerative colitis, retinal vasculitis, chronic myeloid leukaemia, panic disorder, and other ailments to their service or to aggravation during their service.The Bombay High Court said, “Military personnel who are unable to perform their duty and are invalided out from service on medical grounds deserve a grant of pension.” “We do not think that the rule makers intended to deprive the military personnel of the benefit of the disability pension on the ground of delay or constitutional disorder or disease, even if such invaliding diseases occurred while in military service. It is not correct to say that the onus to prove that the disability occurred on account of military service shifted to the military personnel,” the HC division bench of Chief Justice Shree Chandrashekhar and Justice Gautam Ankhad observed in a recent judgment.“For example, it would be absolutely impossible for a military personnel to prove that he suffers from hypertension on account of the rigours of duty in military service,” the HC added. A disability pension can be granted to an officer who is invalided out of service on account of a disability which is either attributable to or aggravated by military service in non-battle casualty cases, and the disability is assessed at 20% or more. A disability pension consisting of a service element and a disability element may also be granted to military personnel in a low medical category who retire on superannuation if found to be suffering on retirement from such attributable disabilities.“The right to pension is a valuable right vested in a govt servant,” HC said. Referring to what the top court said, they noted that pension is not only compensation for loyal services rendered in the past, but it has a broader significance, and it is a measure of socio-economic justice which inheres economic security in the fall of life. The disability pension provided to military personnel has a similar object, the HC held.In 1 case, an officer served in the Army for more than 23 years, was posted at Imphal and Tuting in Manipur and Ladakh, and participated in Operation Rakshak and Operation Parakram in 2002. Disability-free before joining, the medical board said his health was affected due to continued difficult service conditions as an Infantry Officer. The Military Board said diabetes was a “constitutional disorder, not connected with the military service”.The HC said it was the tribunal’s duty to interpret the beneficial provisions. The HC also said there might be cases in which the disease was wholly unrelated to military service, but it needed to be affirmatively proved as such.
