Delhi HC orders disability pension for army nurse denied over obesity, hypertension

New Delhi: The Delhi High Court has directed the government to grant disability pension to a retired nursing officer who served in the army for over 36 years, after she was previously denied the benefit on the grounds of obesity and hypertension.

The petitioner, Dropadi Tripathi, who joined the army in 1969 and retired in 2006, was found to be suffering from obesity and hypertension.

The Release Medical Board (RMB) had assessed her disability at 1–5 per cent for obesity and 30 per cent for hypertension.

Tripathi had applied for disability pension on the grounds of ailments that led to her release from service, but her claim was rejected by the authorities and later upheld by the Armed Forces Tribunal (AFT) in April 2023, news agency IANS reported.

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In its judgment, a division bench of Justices C. Hari Shankar and Om Prakash Shukla set aside the AFT order, holding that the tribunal erred in denying the pension by attributing her hypertension solely to obesity, even though no medical board or specialist had established such a link.

"The impugned order passed by the Tribunal… is ex facie contrary to the law laid down in this regard. The Tribunal, in our respectful opinion, was not justified in drawing, of itself, a causal connection between the hypertension and the obesity from which the petitioner was suffering, where no such causal connect is noticed either in the opinion of the RMB or even in the opinion of the specialist who had examined the petitioner," observed the Justice Hari Shankar-led Bench.

The Delhi High Court reiterated the principle that the burden of proving a causal connection between disability and service does not rest on the candidate but on the administration.

"It is well known that every obese person does not suffer from hypertension, and every person who suffers from hypertension is not necessarily obese," the Delhi High Court said, rejecting the contention that the petitioner’s hypertension was self-inflicted due to her failure to reduce weight.

Setting aside the impugned order, the bench directed, "The respondents (authorities) are directed to release disability pension to the petitioner as claimed by her, reckoned from the date of her release from the military service, along with arrears within a period of twelve weeks from today. Failure to do so would entail interest thereon at the rate of 9 per cent per annum till the date of payment."

Further, the Delhi High Court also granted her the benefit of rounding off the disability pension to 50 per cent in line with a Supreme Court decision. "The benefit of rounding off would be available from the date of the decision in Ram Avtar (case)," it clarified.

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