Defence Personnel and Armed Forces Litigation

We represent serving personnel, veterans, and families of members of the Indian Army, Indian Navy, and Indian Air Force in disputes arising from military service, before the Armed Forces Tribunal, High Courts, and the Supreme Court of India. The practice spans disability pension, service pension, family pension, special and liberalised family pension, service benefits, promotion & seniority, court martial proceedings, disciplinary action, post-retirement claims, and related service-linked entitlements, and routinely calls for close examination of service records, medical board proceedings, pension regulations, statutory complaints, disciplinary records, and the jurisdictional limits of the Tribunal itself.

Disability pension and pensionary claims form an important part of this work, including disputes over attributability or aggravation by military service, assessment of disability and rounding-off, invalid pension, reassessment, arrears, and revision of pensionary benefits. Closely allied to this is our practice on invalidation or downgrading of medical category, including challenges to the findings of Release Medical Boards & Re-Survey Medical Boards, disputes over premature discharge or release on contested medical grounds, and questions of broad-banding of disability percentage on medical invalidment.

We also handle challenges to administrative or disciplinary action taken outside the court martial framework, including show-cause proceedings, censure, and premature termination of service on disciplinary or performance grounds, along with related questions of cashiering, dismissal, and removal from service. On the career-progression side, we advise on promotion & empanelment disputes specific to the armed forces, including non-empanelment before Selection Boards, challenges to Annual Confidential Reports and their impact on career progression, and disputes over inter-se seniority among officers and personnel below officer rank arising from differences in commissioning, cadre allocation, or arm and service.

We also undertake matters relating to One Rank One Pension (OROP) and pay-parity disputes concerning equalisation of pension across batches of retirees in the same rank and length of service, disputes over the tables and formulae used for implementation, and arrears arising from delayed or incorrect application of OROP orders. Further, we advise ex-servicemen on reservation and age-relaxation benefits in civil re-employment, disputes over the grant or denial of ex-servicemen status for benefit purposes, and canteen, medical, and welfare entitlements that survive discharge.