Bijender Singh v. Union of India
Background
The appellant, an army soldier enrolled in 1985, developed a seizure disorder after service at the high-altitude Siachen glacier and was invalided out of the army in 1989 after Medical Boards assessed his disability at consistently below 20%, ruling it "not attributable to or aggravated by" military service, meaning he received only a partial pension with no disability element. He repeatedly petitioned the Armed Forces Tribunal for the fuller disability pension, arguing that no health issue was noted when he joined the army, but the Tribunal dismissed his claim and review application, focusing only on whether his disability crossed the 20% threshold.
Decision Breakdown
The Supreme Court held that the Tribunal applied the wrong test: under the applicable pension Rules and settled precedent, if no disability was recorded at the time of entry into service, a soldier is legally presumed to have been in sound health, and any later-discovered disease is presumed to have arisen from and be caused by military service unless the government affirmatively proves otherwise. The Court also held that where a soldier is invalided out of service at all, his disability must be treated as being above 20% (since regulations do not permit invaliding out for disabilities below that threshold), which triggers a 50% disability pension. Finding the Medical Boards had given no reasoned basis for denying attribution to military service, the Court set aside the Tribunal's orders and directed a 50% disability pension for life from 1996, with interest on arrears.
Lesson Learnt
A soldier discharged from the armed forces for a health condition not noted when he joined gets the benefit of the doubt: the burden falls on the government to prove the condition was unrelated to military service, not on the soldier to prove it was.