In a significant ruling, the Delhi High Court has mandated the payment of disability pension to a retired Army Nursing Officer. This decision overturns an earlier order by the Armed Forces Tribunal (AFT) which had denied her claim, wrongly asserting that her hypertension was directly caused by obesity.
A judicial panel, comprising Justice C. Hari Shankar and Justice Om Prakash Shukla, stated that the Tribunal had no grounds to unilaterally establish a direct link between the officer’s hypertension and her obesity.
In their order, issued on September 26, the Bench emphasized a widely recognized medical fact: not all obese individuals suffer from hypertension, nor is every person with hypertension necessarily obese.
The petitioner, Ms. Dropadi Tripathi, served the Army for over 36 years, joining in November 1969 and retiring in July 2006. She was discharged under a ‘low medical category’. Her Release Medical Board records indicated she had obesity, with a 1-5% disability assessment, and hypertension, assessed at 30% disability.
After her retirement, Ms. Tripathi sought a disability pension, but her application was rejected. She subsequently appealed to the Armed Forces Tribunal in 2018. The Tribunal, however, upheld the denial, pointing to her earlier diagnoses of obesity and hypertension, and noting that her weight had increased despite medical advice to reduce it.
Counsel for the Centre argued that Ms. Tripathi’s weight of 84 kg significantly exceeded the prescribed service weight of 52 kg.
Despite these arguments, the High Court instructed the Centre to process and release Ms. Tripathi’s disability pension, including all accumulated arrears, within a strict twelve-week timeframe, commencing from her date of discharge from service.
