Indian Military Veterans
The never ending battle for Siachen veterans and families
Specialised
rescue teams who were carrying out the operations to search for the
bodies of the soldiers hit by an avalanche, in Siachen on Tuesday. (PTI
Photo)
While the death of ten
soldiers in an avalanche in Siachen has once again brought into
limelight the vagaries of nature that soldiers have to face in the area,
yet the families of soldiers who die in Siachen or those who are
disabled on the highest battlefield have to fight another battle with
pension disbursing authorities to get their due benefits.
Take for example the
case of Harjinder Singh, whose son Lance naik Gurjant Singh of Sikh
Light Infantry died on Siachen Glacier in 2008 due to extreme climatic
conditions. The liberalized family pension which was entitled to the
father was refused to him on the pretext that the death had not taken in
actual fighting but due to extreme weather. It was on judicial orders
that the pension was finally granted but the government chose to appeal
till the Supreme Court which ultimately dismissed the appeal and granted
the pension.
A military widow,
Harjinder Kaur, lost her husband Sepoy Malkit Singh of Punjab regiment
after he suffered a heart attack in Operation Falcon just after another
tenure at Siachen. She was refused the correct entitlement of
liberalized family pension and she too was granted relief on judicial
intervention.
In another case, Gunner
Jai Lal Pal of Artillery was medically boarded out in 1989 after his
fingers were amputated after suffering frostbite in Siachen. He is still
making the rounds of courts to get his correct pension released while
the slow moving military bureaucracy has not been able to complete the
paper work even 27 years after his release.
A short service
commissioned officer, Captain SP Singh, who volunteered to serve in
Siachen, and whose disability of Psoriatic Arthropathy during his
Siachen tenure was wrongly diagnosed as ‘excessive dandruff’, was not
granted permanent commission due to his disability and also refused
disability pension on the pretext that his disability was not affected
by service conditions despite the medical opinion that his condition was
aggravated due to wintry conditions. The officer finally got his
disability pension on judicial intervention.
Officers dealing with
such cases say that though the rules are quite liberal and the High
Courts and the Supreme Court have also strongly ruled in favour of
granting benefits to such disabilities and deaths in Siachen and other
operational areas, the Defence Ministry, Army Headquarters and Defence
Accounts authorities routinely reject claims on technical reasons due to
a textual interpretation, forcing affected families of personnel into
litigation and unnecessary heartburn. Siachen veterans say that the
nature is a bigger killer than bullets at the glacier and also in other
tough operational areas.
High Court lawyer Maj
Navdeep Singh who has fought numerous such cases on behalf of Siachen
veterans says, “Hopefully this tragedy would be a catalyst for change in
the military and civil establishment who must realise that at times the
nature can be more lethal than bullets. We must also salute the
judiciary, especially of Delhi and Punjab and Haryana high courts for
always standing behind such cases”.
(Source- indianexpress)