The Kerala High Court dismissed a writ petition challenging an order of the Armed Forces Tribunal that rejected an ex-serviceman’s claim for disability pension on the ground that his disability was neither attributable to nor aggravated by military service. The petitioner had been invalided out of the armed forces in the mid-1970s with a medical category downgrade and was found by an Invaliding Medical Board to be suffering from a neurotic condition assessed at 30 percent disability for two years, with a finding that the condition was not linked to his service. On that basis, the disability pension claim was denied. The petitioner later sought a reassessment, and a Re-assessment Medical Board in 2015 diagnosed him with Generalised Anxiety Disorder at 40 percent disability for life. Despite this, his subsequent applications, including an appeal to the Armed Forces Tribunal, did not result in grant of the disability pension because the reassessment report likewise did not find the condition to be attributable to or aggravated by military service, and the Tribunal also noted the long lapse of time since his discharge as a factor against entitlement. The petitioner argued that, according to the applicable pension entitlement rules, there is a presumption that a member of the armed forces was in sound physical and mental condition at entry, and that any deterioration leading to discharge should be presumed service-related, especially when read with relevant provisions that favour claimants in borderline cases under the casualty pensionary award regime.
The High Court, sitting as a Division Bench, analysed the relevant Entitlement Rules for Casualty Pensionary Awards and provisions that guide assessment of service connection. Those rules envisage certain presumptions — such as that a recruit is in sound health at entry and that a later discharge on medical grounds involves deterioration in health attributable to service — but also require that the disability be found by medical experts to be causally connected with or aggravated by the conditions of military service to support a claim for pensionary benefits. In this case, the High Court observed that both the Invaliding Medical Board and the Re-assessment Medical Board expressly found no such causal connection. The reassessment report, the court noted, expressly indicated that the claimant had other stress factors in his personal life and post-service circumstances that influenced his condition, and that there was no convincing medical evidence that military service had either caused or worsened his disability. In the absence of any material suggesting that the disability assessed by either board was attributable to or aggravated by service conditions, the court held that there was no denial of fundamental rights or jurisdictional error justifying interference with the Tribunal’s decision under Article 226 of the Constitution.
In rejecting the petitioner’s contention that the aforementioned presumptions alone should lead to the grant of disability pension, the High Court emphasised that the entitlement rules require not only the existence of deterioration in health but also a causal link with service or an aggravation of a pre-existing condition through service duty. The court noted that without such a connection, the mere fact that a condition manifested or was diagnosed during or after service did not suffice to trigger entitlement to pensionary benefits. The High Court found that the medical opinions — as reflected in the initial assessment and later reassessment — did not substantiate the claimant’s argument that military service had a determinative role in his disability, and accordingly upheld the conclusions reached by the Tribunal and the medical authorities.
The court further observed that entitlement to disability pension involves technical and medical assessments that are largely dependent on expert opinion, and that in the absence of cogent evidence supporting a causal connection with service, it would be inappropriate for the court to substitute its own view for that of the medical boards. The High Court’s decision thus reaffirms the principle that, under the established pension entitlement framework for armed forces personnel, a disability must be medically demonstrated to be attributable to or aggravated by military service to qualify for disability pension. Without such a finding by the competent medical authorities, both the Tribunal and the High Court will not grant pensionary benefits solely on the basis of timing of diagnosis or general presumptions of health at entry.
The writ petition was therefore dismissed, with the High Court concluding that the petitioner was not entitled to the relief sought because the disability in question was not shown to be causally linked or aggravated by the conditions of military service.
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