Armed Forces personnel put their every inch of lives on the line for keeping the sovereignty of this nation intact without paying any heed to their own discomfort.
Considering the rigorous training and postings in inaccessible locations across the borders, as an inherent feature of service in the Armed Forces, the soldiers (officers and men) perform their duties even in the fiercest situations whether be it natural calamity, counterinsurgency or safeguarding the borders of the nation from external aggression or other anti-national elements.
The morale of the armed forces requires absolute and undiluted protection and if an injury leads to loss of service without any recompense, this morale would be severely undermined. There exist no provisions authorising the discharge or invaliding out of service where the disability is below 20%.
Wherever a member of the armed forces is invalided out of service, it perforce has to be assumed that his disability was found to be above 20%, and as per the extant Rules/Regulations, a disability leading to invalidating out of service would attract the grant of fifty percent disability pension.”
Earlier, the defence personnel at least had the satisfaction that in compensation for the disability suffered by them due to their military service, they would be granted disability pension. However, the soldiers are now unhappy with the Guidelines to Medical Officers 2023 (‘GMO 2023’) and Entitlement Rules for Casualty Pension and Disability Compensation Awards to Armed Forces Personnel, 2023 (‘ER 2023’) issued by the Department of Ex-Servicemen Welfare (DESW) of the Ministry of Defence.
Apparently, the MoD has done this to allegedly curtail the claim of disability pension from thousands of serving and recently retired personnel in the armed forces of India.
The earlier version of these entitlements ‘GMO/ER 2008’ was a beneficial legislation that provided essential protections and benefits to Armed Forces personnel in terms of granting eligibility for disability pensions. The Government cannot retrospectively alter or withdraw these entitlements, as doing so would undermine the legitimate expectations of those affected officers and violate principles of fairness and equality under the Constitution.
The Ministry of Defence has revised its rules for casualty pension and disability compensation awarded to armed forces personnel. A new Guide to Medical Officers 2023, which details the norms for conducting the various types of medical boards that decide the percentage of disability and its applicability to military service, has also been issued. This policy is based on the recommendations of a study group that comprised members from the Army, Navy, Air Force, Department of Ex-Servicemen Welfare, and MoD. The mandate is to update the rules by incorporating all relevant policy changes since the issuance of the Entitlement Rules 2008.
The aim of the new policy is to streamline the process, improve it, and curb abuse and misuse of the provision, particularly with respect to ‘lifestyle’ diseases. As per the Integrated Defence Staff, “No changes have been made either in the nature or the extent of death and disability compensation that is awarded to entitled personnel. This will have a prospective effect and takes care of the genuine interest of all our soldiers, veterans and widows.”
Under the existing rules, soldiers with a disability of 20 percent or more were granted disability pension, which included the ‘disability element’ and ‘service element’, that is, normal pension for the number of years of service. In the new rules, the ‘disability element’ of pension, granted to disabled personnel who retire or are discharged on terms of engagement, will now be called ‘impairment relief’ and will not be treated as pension.
Even personnel who suffer disabilities in operational areas or during war will be granted ‘war injury relief’ instead of war injury pension. This has apparently been done to deny disabled soldiers income tax exemption on pension under a provision of the Income Tax Act 1922, which had already been unilaterally modified by the Central Board of Direct Taxes on the advice of the Defence Accounts Department. However, Defence Minister, Rajnath Singh had clarified, in Parliament that “I will look into this”, and the decision was held in abeyance.
The conditions for invalid pension have also been changed regressively. It was granted to personnel who were invalided out of service due to a disability neither attributable nor aggravated by military service. The requirement for a minimum of 10 years of qualifying service for this pension was done away with in a Department of Ex-Servicemen Welfare letter dated 16 July 2020 after intervention of the Supreme Court.
Surprisingly, the requirement of 10 years of service has been reintroduced, which is a retrograde step. A soldier with five years of service who meets with an accident while not on duty and is discharged due to an unacceptable disability will not receive any form of pension. If this change is due to an oversight, it only reflects a casual approach to framing the rules.
It is well known that soldiers undergo extreme stress and strain in both war and peace. Despite this well-established norm, the new Guide to Medical Officers has become more stringent with respect to service-related diseases caused or aggravated by extreme stress and strain.
A case in point is hypertension and diabetes, whose disability percentages have been reduced from 30 per cent and 20 per cent to 5 percent, making such soldiers ineligible for any impairment relief. Only stress and strain related to high-altitude terrain will be considered relevant for hypertension and cardiovascular diseases, with no consideration for service in high pressure peace areas or field areas as was the case till now.
These changes contradict earlier guidelines issued by the Director General of Armed Forces Medical Services. The existing rules, supported by the Supreme Court and high court judgments and Central Civil Services (Extraordinary Pension) Rules 2023 for civilians generally serving in peace areas, provided that all heart diseases and hypertension are linked with stress and strain of service without any question.
A disability pension is considered the rightful acknowledgement of a soldier’s sacrifice and service, not an act of generosity. It’s a form of financial support provided to soldiers, who have sustained disabilities due to their military service, which has made them physically and mentally incapacitated for further progress, in their own services or outside. This pension aims to provide financial security and dignity to such soldiers as during their defence services, they had given their best that they could do.
This is what the Delhi High Court also said, while dismissing a consolidated batch of nearly 300 writ petitions filed by the MoD, challenging disability pension awards granted to retired armed forces personnel by the Armed Forces Tribunal (AFT).
In a detailed judgment delivered recently, a division bench of Justices Navin Chawla and Shalinder Kaur upheld the AFT’s rulings, finding no legal basis to interfere with its decisions in favour of veterans suffering from service-related medical conditions.
The court reaffirmed that, as per the rules interpreted by the Supreme Court, soldiers are not required to prove their disability claims. Instead, they are entitled to the benefit of the doubt unless the medical board provides clear and convincing evidence that the disability predated their entry to the service and is unrelated to their military duties.
The judgment also observed that disability benefits are not a matter of state generosity, but a rightful recognition of the hardships endured during military service and a reflection of the government’s responsibility toward those who have served the nation.
The defence ministry had contended that the ailments in question, including diabetes, hypertension, heart disease and psychiatric disorders, were “neither attributable to, nor aggravated by” military service. Under existing rules, only those disabilities found to be attributable to or aggravated by military service are eligible for pension benefits and lifestyle disorders are not considered to be eligible for such entitlements.
This may be noted that a war-like situation, which is in aplenty in the present scenario, is as harmful as going into a specific war. Nature of duty of a soldier of any rank, besides being fraught with physical danger, is full of tension and fatigue of various degrees both in off or in war.
It is ironic that the judiciary is being more considerate towards the rights of our soldiers than its government. The Defence Ministry appears to be playing anti-defence forces than realising and looking into their problems starting from pay and parks to related service conditions!