Disabily benefits for pre-2006 pensioners-Tribune News Service:Veteran Prabhjot Sinngh Chhatwal PLS Retd.

Disability benefits for pre-1996 pensioners
Vijay Mohan:Tribune News Service
Chandigarh, January 31.Following recommendations of the
Committeeof Secretaries, the government has partially modified
regulations fordisability pension and extended benefit of broad-
banding of disability percentage to those invalided out of service
prior to January 1996.
The cap on war injury pension, restricting the same to the
maximum of last drawn emoluments for personnel invalided
out in Category ‘E’, alsostands 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 earlierat 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 already held 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 strange in 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.