Allahabad High Court Grants Disability Pension to Army Havildar After 27 Years of Service
The Allahabad High Court has upheld an Armed Forces Tribunal order granting disability pension to former Army Medical Corps Havildar Jeetendra Kumar, holding that a medical board’s unexplained opinion cannot be used to deny pension merely because his first seizure was recorded while he was on leave at a peace station.
A Division Bench of Justice Alok Mathur and Justice Amitabh Kumar Rai delivered the ruling while hearing a petition filed by the Union of India and four other authorities challenging the Tribunal’s order dated 6 October 2023. The High Court directed that Kumar be granted disability pension with immediate effect, along with all attendant benefits under the applicable rules. The judgment was pronounced on 2 September 2026.
Nearly 27 Years of Service Before Medical Discharge
According to the court record, Kumar joined the Army Medical Corps on 30 April 1998 and was discharged on 30 April 2022 in the low medical category during an extension of his service limit. He had completed 27 years, three months and two days of service. The court noted that no seizure disorder or related ailment was recorded when he was enrolled.
Medical documents placed before the bench showed that the first onset of the condition was recorded at Lucknow on 5 August 2018. He was then treated at Base Hospital, Delhi Cantonment, from 20 August 2018. A Release Medical Board convened at Military Hospital, Bareilly, on 3 March 2022 described his disability as “Seizure Disorder (G40.9)” and assessed it at 20 per cent for life. Despite that assessment, the board marked the condition as neither attributable to nor aggravated by military service, which led to rejection of his disability pension claim.
Court Finds Medical Board’s Reasoning Inadequate
The Union government relied on the board’s brief explanation that the first seizure had occurred while Kumar was on leave at a peace station and that there was no evidence of service-related trauma or infection. The High Court found that reasoning insufficient. It noted that the board had recorded “NO” against both attributability and aggravation, but had not set out Kumar’s medical history or any cogent clinical basis for its conclusion.
The bench said that the requirement for a medical board to record reasons is not a procedural formality but a necessary part of deciding whether disability pension should be granted or denied. “The requirement to give reasons by the Medical Board is crucial, critical, decisive and necessary for the purpose of granting or denying disability pension and it is not a mere formality,” the judges observed. The court added that an unexplained medical opinion cannot stand in law as the sole basis for refusing pension.
The judges also examined the applicable rules, which provide that a disease leading to discharge is ordinarily deemed to have arisen in service if it was not noted at the time of entry. The court clarified that this presumption does not automatically establish a service connection. A causal link with military service still has to be shown. At the same time, the medical board must identify some cause other than service and support that conclusion with reasons. In Kumar’s case, the bench held, that obligation had not been met.
Leave at a Peace Station Not Decisive
The High Court also rejected the argument that the onset of the seizure disorder at a peace station, while Kumar was on leave, was enough to deny the claim. The regulations, the bench said, make it immaterial whether the cause of a disability arose in a field or active-service area or under ordinary peace conditions. Direct and circumstantial evidence must be considered, and where the rules permit, the benefit of reasonable doubt must go to the serviceman.
The court referred to the Tribunal’s view that peace stations are not free from the rigours of military life and can involve training as well as the attendant stress and strain. It also noted medical guidance indicating that seizure disorders may appear at different ages without any clearly discoverable cause, and that triggers can include sleep deprivation, emotional stress, physical and mental exhaustion, infection, fever and loud noise.
Pension Granted, Discharge Not Disturbed
The High Court did not interfere with Kumar’s discharge from service on medical grounds. Its ruling was limited to the pension issue, and it held that the denial of disability pension could not be sustained. The authorities have been directed to release disability pension immediately and to extend all associated benefits in accordance with the rules.
The decision follows a line of recent rulings by the same bench and other High Courts that have held a routine “neither attributable nor aggravated” endorsement, without recorded reasons, is not enough to defeat a disability pension claim. The courts have repeatedly stressed that this is especially true where a soldier entered service in sound health and later developed the condition during his period of service.
In Kumar’s case, the court said, the fact that he served for more than two decades and was ultimately assessed as permanently disabled at the statutory threshold of 20 per cent could not be overlooked on the basis of a brief note that the first seizure had occurred on leave in a peace area. The judgment reinforces the principle that while medical boards are expert bodies, their conclusions must still be reasoned if they are to determine a serviceman’s entitlement to disability pension.
