Tribunal grants relief to blind soldier denied allowance by defence accounts

Holding the accounts department responsible for the delay, the AFT has ordered the payment of interest on the entire amount as ordained by judgments of the Supreme Court in such circumstances.

A blind and limbless soldier, who was invalided out of the Army with 100 per cent disability, has been given relief by the Armed Forces Tribunal (AFT) after the Principal Controller of Defence Accounts (Pensions) stopped paying him attendant allowance for the past 19 years. Sepoy Begum Singh, a resident of Batala in Punjab and a former soldier in the Sikh Light Infantry Regiment of the Army, had stopped receiving the Constant Attendant Allowance (CAA) which was applicable to him as a blind and limbless soldier since 1998. He had been invalided out of the Army for his disability in 1984 after he suffered injuries in a blast. This allowance is granted to such soldiers who require the help of an attendant for their day to day needs.

The amount was a paltry Rs 600 till year 2006 and was revised to Rs 3000 thereafter. Holding the Principal Controller of Defence Accounts (Pensions) responsible for the delay of payment of CAA, the Chandigarh Bench of the AFT has awarded an interest at the rate of 9 per cent from the date the amount fell due in the year 1998. The advocate for Begum Singh said that the veteran had been called for a Re-Survey Medical Board by the Army in 1998 which declared his condition as ‘static’ and awarded the continuance of the same disability benefits as before.

However, when the papers were sent to the office of the PCDA for continuance of payments, the said office unilaterally discontinued the payment of the CAA from 1998 onwards. Repeated requests to the office did not yield any result and various letters by the Army’s Record Office also did not move the PCDA into action. Ultimately the soldier filed a petition in the AFT for release of his benefits. Soon after the petition was filed, the benefits were released to him by the office of the PCDA. However, now the AFT has also awarded him interest on the amount due to him.

Holding the accounts department responsible for the delay, the AFT has ordered the payment of interest on the entire amount as ordained by judgments of the Supreme Court in such circumstances. The AFT also recorded that “the onus of the delay lies on the part of the Respondent No 3 (Accounts Department) and not the Army since it was Respondent No 3 which did not take requisite action despite several requests”.

An expert committee of the Ministry of Defence (MoD) had also adversely commented on the role of financial authorities in denying meagre allowance to disabled soldiers. In it’s report submitted to MoD in 2016, the panel noted, “We are at a loss to comprehend why negative energy and multiple reams of papers should be wasted on such issues concerning benefits of soldiers and deceased soldiers, which are anyway minor from the organisational point of view, when there are much more important financial matters worth pondering over. We find it difficult to digest as to how logic itself is being stretched to illogical limits due to an all-pervasive pessimistic environment just to deny benefits to our men and women in uniform”.

The panel noted that some finance officials are not aware of the actual working and operating environment and conditions of the defence services, to which they should be duly exposed. “The staff dealing with pensionary claims and casualty benefits must gain first-hand experience on the existing conditions in which our men and women in uniform operate so as to sensitize them about the same. The said exposure must not be a mere formality but an authentic exercise,” the panel had noted.