Vijay Mohan:Tribune News Service.
Chandigarh, January 31.Following the recommendations of the Committee of Secretaries, the government has partially
modified regulations for disability pension and extended
benefit of broad-banding of disability percentage to those
invalided out of serviceprior to January 1996.The cap on
war injury pension, restricting the same to themaximum
of last drawn emoluments for personnel invalided out in
Category ‘E’, also stands removed. The orders to this effect
were issued by the Ministry of Defence on January 19 after
financial sanction for the same was accorded earlier this
month.The benefits of broad-banding of disability
percentage and removing the cap on war injury pension
were recommended by the Sixth Pay Commission. These
were, however, extended only to those invalided out of
service in1996 or after, thereby putting similarly placed
persons left service earlier at a disadvantage.While the
partial modification has been welcomed by veterans as
a positive development,some officers and legal experts
point out that the benefits have been extended only to
those individuals, who were invalided out of service and
not to those who retired on completion of their terms of
engagement.
In the case, Paramjit Singh Vs Union of India, the Punjab
and Haryana High Court, has alreadyheld this disparity
to be arbitrary.
Regulations now themselves provide that for the purposes
of disability pension, persons placed in low medical
category at the time of retirement are deemed to be invalided
out of service.The different treatment between invalided and
superannuating personnel, according to lawyers dealing in
the pensionary matters, seems strangein view of the fact that
broad-banding or rounding-off disability percentage was
introduced to curb medical subjectivity because it was felt
that different medical boards were providing different
percentages of disability for similar ailments.
Veteran Prabhjot Singh Chhatwal PLS Retd.
Mob.098554-09128,Tele-fax 0175-5000896.
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