Raksha Mantri Committee's 2015 Recommendation To Withdraw NANA Litigation Not "Faithfully Implemented": Supreme Court Dismisses Union's Appeals On Armed Forces Disability Pension
The Court held that the Entitlement Rules 2008 "substantially reproduce" the beneficial scheme of the 1982 Rules, subject only to a limited qualification under Rule 7, and directed that the onus of proof continues to rest on the Department except where claims are raised after fifteen years of discharge.
Disposing of an unusually large batch of appeals concerning disability pension of ex-servicemen, the Supreme Court has recorded that the recommendation of the Ministry of Defence's own 2015 Raksha Mantri Committee, which called for the immediate withdrawal of pending appeals rejecting disability claims as "Neither Attributable Nor Aggravated" (NANA) by military service, has "not been faithfully implemented," notwithstanding the Ministry's formal acceptance of the recommendation in 2018. The Court made this observation while dismissing 271 civil appeals and special leave petitions filed by the Union of India, noting that such litigation continues to be filed even after the recommendation for withdrawal was accepted.
On the substantive controversy underlying this litigation, the Court held that the Entitlement Rules for Casualty Pensionary Awards, 2008 do not bring about any fundamental alteration of the beneficial framework contained in the Entitlement Rules, 1982.
The Bench undertook a rule-by-rule comparison across the subjects of presumption at entry, causal connection, onus of proof, aggravation, and cases where the cause of disability is unknown. It concluded that while the 2008 Rules dilute the automatic presumption of sound health at entry, the core protective architecture, particularly the primary allocation of the burden of proof to the Department, survives intact. The only exception is a narrow one under the proviso to Rule 7 for claims raised more than fifteen years after discharge, retirement, invalidment or release.
A Bench comprising Justice Pamidighantam Sri Narasimha and Justice Alok Aradhe observed, “Raksha Mantri Report recommended the immediate withdrawal of appeals of this nature pending against disabled soldiers, a recommendation that has not been faithfully implemented. Appeals such as these are filed and continue to be filed, even after the Ministry of Defence accepted the Committee’s recommendation for withdrawal of this class of litigation”.
“It appears that the Entitlement Rules 2008 is a collation of the modified executive instructions issued subsequent to the Entitlement Rules 1982. We are at a loss to understand as to why the position of a rule that governs pensionary benefits be shrouded in mystery. Transparency, clarity and certainty are of enormous importance for any legitimate action. There should not be dissatisfaction and lack of confidence in the minds of ex-servicemen about the manner in which their claims and entitlement are being dealt with. It is necessary, rather compelling, that the applicable rules/regulations are formulated and notified authoritatively by the competent authority as early as possible”, the Bench further noted.
R. Venkataramani, Attorney General of India appeared for the Union of India while Counsels Sudhanshu Pandey, M.V. Mukunda, Brig. Shrivastava and others appeared for the ex-servicemen.
The disputes arose from cases in which Release Medical Boards, at the first instance of assessment, had opined that the disabilities suffered by the ex-servicemen concerned were NANA. Relying on these opinions, the intra-departmental appeals of the affected personnel were dismissed.
The aggrieved ex-servicemen thereafter approached the Armed Forces Tribunal or the jurisdictional High Courts, which interfered with the departmental findings and granted disability pension on the finding that the disabilities were attributable to or aggravated by military service. The present appeals were filed by the Union challenging both the Tribunal's orders and the High Courts' orders confirming them.
The Court recorded that the present batch was "only a speck" compared to the number of similar matters already dismissed by it on grounds of delay and on merits, and that it had earlier called upon the learned Attorney General to explain why the Union continued to file appeals of this nature despite a settled and conclusive judgment of the Court. The Bench clarified that it was not concerned with the mere filing of appeals but with the systemic failure to resolve disputes that had already attained finality.
In its reasoning, the Court traced the historical evolution of the pension framework from the Pension Regulations of 1940 through the Entitlement Rules 1982, examined the decision in Dharamvir Singh v. Union of India (2013) 7 SCC 316, and confronted a long-standing controversy over the very promulgation of the Entitlement Rules 2008, extracting extensively from the 2015 Raksha Mantri Committee Report's finding that the 2008 instrument had "no sanctity of law" for want of Cabinet and Department of Pension and Pensioners' Welfare approval.
Without conclusively determining the question of promulgation, the Court independently tested whether, assuming the 2008 Rules had legal effect, they altered the substance of entitlement, and answered this in the negative, aligning with the reasoning of the Kerala High Court in Union of India v. Bhaskaran N. 2024 SCC OnLine Ker 7023 and the Delhi High Court in Col. Balbir Singh v. Union of India 2025 DHC 5082-DB. The Court also cited data obtained under the Right to Information Act, 2005, showing that of 2,997 claims before the First Appellate Authority, only 142 were accepted, to highlight the pattern of denial.
“Mere manifestation of a disease during military service does not, by itself, establish that the disease was attributable to or aggravated by such service. The Entitlement Rules 2008 require a disease-specific and individualised assessment having regard to the nature of the disease, the conditions of service, the individual’s clinical and service history, and the existence of a causal connection between the two”, the Bench said.
Accordingly, the Court dismissed the present batch on grounds of delay as well as on merits, while clarifying that due weight must be given to Medical Board opinions, that Tribunals must scrutinise such opinions in detail before deciding pending claims, and that the burden shifts to the claimant only where a claim is raised beyond the fifteen-year period prescribed under Rule 7 of the Entitlement Rules 2008. There was no order as to costs.
Cause Title: Union of India & Ors. v. Col. NC Isaac (Retd.) (Neutral Citation: 2026 INSC 993)
Appearances:
Appellant: R. Venkataramani, Attorney General of India.
Respondent: Sudhanshu Pandey, M.V. Mukunda, Brig. Shrivastava, U.S. Maurya, Col. Naresh Ghai, Siddharth Agarwal, Girish Kumar, Ajit Kakkar, Praveen Kumar, Aditya Puar, Col. I.S. Singh, Baldev Singh, Maheravesh Rein, Vivekbhai Patel and Kanti.
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