The Allahabad High Court has upheld an Armed Forces Tribunal order granting disability pension to a former Army Medical Corps Havildar who served more than 27 years and was later assessed as 20 per cent disabled for life. The Court held that an unexplained medical-board opinion cannot be used to deny pension merely because the first seizure occurred while the soldier was on leave at a peace station.
A Division Bench of Justices Alok Mathur and Amitabh Kumar Rai delivered the ruling while hearing a petition filed by the Union of India and four other authorities against the Tribunal’s order dated 6 October 2023. The High Court directed that former Havildar Jeetendra Kumar be granted disability pension with immediate effect, together with all attendant benefits under the applicable rules. The judgment was pronounced on 2 September 2026.
Service Record and Medical History
Kumar was enrolled in the Army Medical Corps on 30 April 1998 and discharged on 30 April 2022 in the low medical category during an extension of his service limit. The Court recorded that he had rendered 27 years, three months and two days of service. No seizure disorder or related ailment was noted at the time of his enrolment.
Medical records placed before the Court showed that the first onset of the condition was recorded at Lucknow on 5 August 2018. He was thereafter treated at Base Hospital, Delhi Cantonment, from 20 August 2018. The Release Medical Board held at Military Hospital, Bareilly, on 3 March 2022 described the disability as “Seizure Disorder (G40.9)” and assessed it at 20 per cent for life. The Board nevertheless marked the condition as neither attributable to nor aggravated by military service, which led to rejection of the disability pension claim.
Why the Medical Board’s Opinion Failed
The Union government relied on the Board’s brief justification that the first seizure 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 inadequate. The Board had recorded “NO” against both attributability and aggravation, yet failed to set out Kumar’s medical history or any cogent clinical basis for its conclusion.
“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 Bench observed. It held that reasons supporting a medical-board opinion are essential when that opinion can determine a serviceman’s discharge and his entitlement to disability pension. An unexplained medical opinion, the Court said, cannot be sustained in law as the sole basis for denial.
The applicable rules 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, by itself, establish causation. A causal connection with service conditions is still required. At the same time, the Board must identify a cause other than military service and record adequate reasons. That duty, the Court found, had not been discharged.
Peace Station Is Not a Ground for Denial
The Bench also rejected the argument that onset at a peace station was decisive. The regulations 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 the benefit of reasonable doubt is to be given to the individual where the rules so provide.
The Court noted the Tribunal’s observation that peace stations also involve rigorous military training and associated stress and strain. It further referred to medical guidance that seizure disorders may develop at different ages without an obvious discoverable cause, and that sleep deprivation, emotional stress, physical and mental exhaustion, infection, fever and loud noise may trigger seizures.
Relief Granted; Discharge Left Undisturbed
The High Court did not interfere with Kumar’s discharge from service on medical grounds. It confined its intervention to the pension question and held that the denial of disability pension could not stand. The authorities have been directed to grant disability pension with immediate effect and to extend all attendant benefits in accordance with the rules.
The ruling is consistent with a line of recent decisions of the same Bench and of other High Courts holding that a mechanical “neither attributable nor aggravated” endorsement, without recorded reasons, is insufficient to defeat a disability-pension claim, particularly where the soldier entered service in sound health and later developed the condition during the currency of service.
The case underscores a settled principle in service-pension jurisprudence: medical boards are expert bodies, but their conclusions must be reasoned. Where a soldier has given more than two decades of service and is assessed as permanently disabled at the statutory threshold of 20 per cent, a brief note that the first attack occurred on leave in a peace area will not, without more, extinguish the claim.
