Improvement of Disability Pension for pre-06 retirees : Orders partly issued:Veteran Prabhjot Singh Chhatwal PLS Retd.

Improvement of Disability Pension for pre-06 retirees :
Orders partly issued-Navdeep
The Govt of India has issued certain orders regarding
disability pension in pursuance to the recommendations
of the Committee of Secretaries headed by the Cabinet
Secretary.The benefit of rounding-off / broad-banding of
disability percentage has now been extended to pre-1-1-1996
invalided personnel also. The provisions of the earlier
Govt of India letter dated 31 Jan 2001 which provided a
cut-off date of 1-1-96 for the said benefit, stand amended
accordingly.The cap on War Injury Pension restricting the
same to the maximum of ‘last drawn emoluments’ for
personnel invalided out in Category ‘E’ of the above
mentioned letter dated 31 Jan 2001 also stands removed.
The orders on calculating disability element on a percentage
basis have not been issued as yet.The benefit of rounding-off
/broad-banding, like before, has only been extended to
persons who were ‘invalided out’ and not to those who were
retired / discharged on completion of terms of engagement
or on superannuation. The Hon’ble Punjab & Haryana High
Court in Paramjit Singh Vs UOI, while differing with the
Hon’ble Supreme Court in Lt Col PK Kapoor Vs UOI, has
already held this action to be arbitrary. Surprisingly, neither
the Petitioner nor the Govt had brought to the notice of the
Hon’ble Supreme Court in Col Kapoor’s case that Regulations
now themselves provide that persons in Low Medical
Category at the time of retirement are also ‘deemed’ to
be invalided out for the purposes of disability pension.
The different treatment between invalided and
superannuating personnel also seems strange in view of the
fact that broad-banding / rounding-off was introduced to curb
medical subjectivity since it was felt that different medical
boards were providing different percentages of disability for
similar ailments. To counter such assessment mistakes, the
concept of broad-banding of disability percentage was
introduced. Keeping this in view, it hardly makes any sense
to deny broad-banding to superannuating personnel while
granting it to invalided personnel since that would amount
to saying that medical subjectivity was only existing in
medical boards examining invalided personnel and not
those which were examining superannuating personnel.
This fact of the reason behind broad-banding was hidden
from the Hon’ble Supreme Court in Kapoor’s case and hence
the judgement has no binding effect on courts inferior being
a judgement sub-silentio. In fact, the judgement was
rendered on the incorrect statement of the Union of India
that broad-banding was granted as a compensation to
invalided personnel, a fact that was sadly not countered by
the Petitioner who was appearing in person.
Veteran Prabhjot Singh Chhatwal PLS Retd.